Kamala Harris is set to officially accept her nomination as the Democratic candidate in this year’s election at the DNC. Of course, her family has been by her side every step of the way, including her husband, Doug Emhoff, and his kids, Cole and Ella. Doug’s ex-wife, Kerstin, has also supported Kamala’s political career over the years as she attended her inauguration in 2021 and was spotted in the crowd at the DNC in Chicago.
While Kamala is Cole and Ella’s stepmom, Kerstin also co-parents her children with Doug. Meaning: We’ll probably see a lot more of her during the 2024 election campaign trail. So let us catch you up to speed on Kerstin and her relationship with VP Harris, shall we?
Kerstin was married to Doug for almost 20 years.
Before Doug tied the knot with Kamala in 2014, he was married to Kerstin from 1992 to 2010. “I would have never thought that I would have married a lawyer,” Kerstin revealed to Politico in 2021. “I was a film student and I grew up in a performing arts school, but, you know, I like really smart people, and he’s incredibly smart and we connected very quickly.”
Kerstin is a film producer and CEO of her own company.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Kerstin graduated from Boston University’s College of Communication in 1990 before she pursued a film career in L.A. In 2007, she founded her own production company, Prettybird, which specializes in branded and music content and spawned several notable projects, like Beyoncé’s Grammy-nominated “Formation” music video (!!!) in 2016.
Per NPR, Kerstin recently helped produce a video bio of Doug that played at the DNC in Chicago. Watch it below:
She won an Emmy.
Yep! In 2012, Kerstin won a News & Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Informational Programming–Long Form for her project The Tillman Story. Her production company has also been recognized with nominations at Cannes Lions, the MTV VMAs, and the Grammys.
Kerstin is good friends with Kamala and Doug.
In a 2019 essay for ELLE, Kamala opened up about her connection with Kerstin, writing, “She and I became a duo of cheerleaders in the bleachers at Ella’s swim meets and basketball games, often to Ella’s embarrassment....We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional.”
Vice President Harris also touched on their dynamic in her memoir, The Truths We Hold, referring to Kerstin as a “terrific mother.”
“I had—and have—tremendous admiration and respect for Kerstin. I could tell from the way Doug talked about his kids that she was a terrific mother—and in later months, as Kerstin and I got to know each other, we really hit it off ourselves and became friends,” Kamala wrote.
Kerstin also came to Kamala’s defense when people started criticizing her for not having her own biological children. “These are baseless attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,” Kerstin said in a statement to CNN. “She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”
