Vice President-elect Kamala Harris says she'll be thinking of her late mom when she is sworn in

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has said that she will be thinking about her late mother when she is sworn into power in January.

In an interview with Good Morning America on Wednesday, Harris, who is set to become the first female vice president and the first Black person or person of Indian descent to hold the office, said that she will be  "be thinking about [her] mother" on Inauguration Day.

In the video below, Harris calls Joe Biden to congratulate him on his projected presidential win:

"I'll be thinking about all those girls and boys," Harris, 56, told Robin Roberts, per People. "You know, before the pandemic struck, fathers and the mothers that would bring them around and say, 'You know, you can do anything.' "

Harris then said of her own mother, who died of cancer in 2009, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan: "I was raised by a mother who said to me all the time, 'Kamala, you may be the first to do many things - make sure you're not the last.' "

"That's how I feel about this moment," Harris said.

The soon-to-be vice president was born in California in 1964 to immigrant parents, with her mother, a researcher, coming to the US from India, and her father, economist Donald Harris, who came to the country from Jamaica.

Harris' mother, who was described in her obituary as "a commanding presence characterized by a sharp wit, keen sense of humor and endless depth of knowledge", taught her to be proud of her identity.

"My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters," Harris wrote in her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold.

"She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women."

Credit: 2762

As the first woman to occupy the role, Harris said that she and her husband, Doug Emhoff (who will become the first-ever second gentleman), feel "a very big sense of responsibility" about their new roles.

"He's aware that we still have so much work to do to remind our children of every gender that they should not be confined by the limited perception that some might have of who they are and what they can be," she said.