US Election 2020: Here's what you need to know about the families of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris

Image: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

US President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have both often spoken about their respective families, who were present while the duo gave their victory speeches on November 7.

Biden and Harris are set to move into the White House in January 2021, after defeating Donald Trump in the US Presidential Election.

Joe Biden's family

Jill Biden, the President-elect's wife, will continue her role as a professor at Northern Virginia Community College, making her the only First Lady to have a job outside of her role at the White House.

She is Joe Biden's second wife, and the couple have a daughter - Ashley, who is a social worker.

As First Lady, Jill Biden will likely work on education issues and relaunch Joining Forces, a mission to rally around military families, according to an AFP report.

"Jill's a mom — a military mom — and an educator. She has dedicated her life to education, but teaching isn't just what she does — it's who she is," Biden said during his victory speech at Wilmington, Delaware.

Biden's first wife Neilia Hunter and their daughter Amy passed away in a car accident in 1972. The couple had two other children - Hunter, who is currently a lawyer, and Beau, who died due brain cancer in 2015.

Beau Biden, a close friend of Kamala Harris, was a lawyer and served as an officer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps from Wilmington, Delaware. He was deployed to Iraq in 2008 for a year.

Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma holdings, a Ukranian private natural gas producer, while Joe Biden was Vice President.

A New York Post article earlier this year alleged that Hunter arranged a meeting between his father and Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor to Burisma. The article cited one email, but did not provide any substantial evidence to support the claim.

Kamala Harris' family

Harris was born to Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris, who immigrated to the US from India and Jamaica respectively.

Harris has often spoken about the Indian side of her family, particularly about her late mother and late grandfather PV Gopalan.

"And to the woman most responsible for my presence here today, my mother, who is always in our hearts. When she came here from India at the age of 19, she did not quite imagine this moment, but she believes so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible," Harris said during her victory speech on November 7.

Gopalan, a biomedical scientist, was from Tamil Nadu and moved to the US  at the age of 19. She married economist Donald Harris in 1963, but later divorced him in 1971.

Kamala Harris is married to Douglas Emhoff, an entertainment lawyer, which would make him the first Second Gentleman of the US. Harris has said Emhoff's children from his first marriage call her "Momala".

Harris' younger sister Maya and niece Meena, both lawyers, actively express their support for Harris on social media.

The Vice-President elect's maternal uncle Gopalan Balachandran and other family members from India are planning to fly to the US for the inauguration, according to a media report.