Kamala Harris, on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020, became America's first female, first black and first South Asian vice president-elect.

The California senator's history-making victory has been touted as a win for the millions of underrepresented women in the demographics often overlooked and systematically ignored.

The 56-year-old is the first woman of colour to be vice president-elect -- the first time in the country's 200-plus-year history.

Harris put up on social media a video of herself on the phone with President-elect Joe Biden shortly after the Democratic candidates pushed past 270 electoral votes and major network news projected their win.

Spent career breaking barriers

Harris' triumph as Biden's VP pick marks a new high point in her career that saw her breaking barriers.

She graduated from Howard in 1986 with an undergraduate degree.

Howard University is a historically black university in Washington.

She then graduated from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in 1989.

Harris then passed the bar the following year and joined the Alameda County prosecutor's office as an assistant district attorney.

From there, she began her political ascent.

In 2003, Harris won her first race for San Francisco district attorney, becoming the first black woman to hold such an office in California, serving from 2004 to 2010.

In 2010, she became the first black woman elected as California attorney general.

In 2016, she became only the second black woman ever elected as a U.S. senator, representing California since then.

She let people know others stood in her way

"That I am here tonight is a testament to the dedication of generations before me," Harris said during her Democratic National Convention acceptance speech in August.

Harris never shied away from mentioning that people attempted to box her in or doubted her as she sought to pave a path in politics.

She made these views known over the course of her White House bid.

"I didn't listen. And the people didn't listen, either. And we won," she would say.

Activist parents

Harris was born in Oakland, California, in 1964.

Her parents raised her in the midst of civil rights activism, and her parents were participants.

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was an Indian immigrant and a breast cancer researcher.

She died of cancer in 2009.

Harris' father, Donald, is a Jamaican American professor of economics.

The couple divorced in 1972.

On the campaign trail, the vice president-elect often talked about how her activist parents would push her in her stroller at civil rights marches.

Harris grew up in the Bay Area.

She went back to India frequently to visit extended family.

At 12, she and her sister, Maya, moved with their mother to majority-White Montréal.

This was after Gopalan Harris secured a teaching post at McGill University, as well as a research position at the Jewish General Hospital.

Spoke about mother during campaigning

Harris frequently spoke during her campaign about her closeness to her mother.

"My mother, she raised my sister and me, and she was tough," Harris would say.

"Our mother was all of 5 feet tall, but if you ever met her, you would've thought she was 10 feet tall."

Spoke about being first

Harris also often spoke of her barrier-breaking life during her presidential primary campaign, saying that she understood how being the first requires voters to "see what can be unburdened by what has been".

"You didn't have to be confined by anyone else's idea of what it means to be Black," she told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" in September.

"You could be a fine arts student and also be class president. You could be homecoming queen and be the head of the science club. You could be a member of a sorority and be in student government and want to go to law school, and it encouraged you to be your full self."

When Biden announced Harris as his running mate in August, he said: "I know a thing or two about being vice president. More than anything, I know it can't be a political decision. It has to be a governing decision."

"If the people of this nation entrust me and Kamala with the office of president and vice president for the next four years, we're going to inherit a nation in crisis, a nation divided, and a world in disarray. We won't have a minute to waste. That's what led me to Kamala Harris."

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Top photo via Time & Kamala Harris