Since becoming Vice President, Kamala Harris has faced her share of reports about her management style and the high turnover in her office. But this summer, when President Joe Biden announced he was ending his reelection campaign, hundreds of former staffers for Harris expressed their support for her in an enthusiastic endorsement of her leadership. 

“From her days in California, to her leadership in the White House, we saw Kamala Harris when the cameras were on and when the cameras were off,” they wrote. “She is an extraordinary leader of great character, and she is clear eyed about building a better future for our country for generations to come.”

While some of her former staff do characterize her as a boss with high standards—both for herself and for her employees—they largely describe Harris as a strong leader with a clear vision and someone who cares deeply about the people she is serving. They also argue that Harris has always been acutely aware of the responsibility she bears as a Black and South Asian woman who was often breaking barriers as she rose through the ranks. 

“When you’re the first, that comes with a magnifying glass,” says Rachel Palermo, who worked in the Vice President’s office for three years, as assistant press secretary and then deputy communications director. “You are unfairly scrutinized and held to a different standard. Vice President Harris has been the first in nearly every position she has held, and if she hasn’t been the first, she’s been the second. When you are breaking barriers, you need to exceed expectations, and she has done exactly that.”

Fast Company spoke to a number of people who have worked for Harris over the last 20 years, dating back to her campaign for District Attorney in San Francisco. Here’s what they had to say about her leadership and what they learned from working under her. Our conversations have been edited for clarity and length. 

‘A gifted communicator’

I met her in 2000, so it’s been almost 25 years now. I was working with Senator Dianne Feinstein at the time, and she had a very small dinner on election night for family and friends. Kamala and I sat next to each other, and it was the first time I really had an opportunity to talk with her. We had a fascinating conversation which really just changed my life.

It really piqued my interest in collaborating with her [and] working with her in some sort of way. What came through for me was that she was passionate and had done a lot of thinking about [how the] status quo could be changed and made better. She was a gifted communicator. She has a really sharp wit, and she’s funny. It was all those things in that first conversation which really just had an influence on me.

She’s both an aspirational thinker, and she’s definitely her mother’s daughter. She’s aspirational about where she wants to go, and she’s also really pragmatic. So you feel like you have a vision to work toward, but you also have really practical steps to get there.

She also is just a natural coalition builder. You pressure test things. Everybody has a voice. People come from different perspectives, and you tend to come out on the other side stronger for it. It was kind of a kitchen table approach, where we would all get around the table and kind of talk it through. She was the ultimate decision maker, but by doing that, we all felt invested. 

—Debbie Mesloh, communications aide to Harris as District Attorney and during her Attorney General and Senate campaigns

‘Someone [who] does her homework’

She has incredible strategic vision. She’s very good at articulating a philosophy and a vision, and then working with her team to turn that vision into specific policy goals and wins. She’s able to do that in a way that I have not seen from other politicians that I’ve worked with. She’s really good in a crisis, in situations that require a leader to pivot and quickly handle an emergency that they weren’t prepared to handle. She would often refer to books she was reading about leadership issues, so I think she’s like a lifelong student of management and leadership principles.

I think she’s a great boss. I will say that Vice President Harris holds herself to a very high standard, and therefore holds others around her to a similar standard. She expects folks to be prepared for meetings and dive into the details with her. Not every politician is going to be that prepared; she’s someone [who] does her homework before meetings. I should add that she likes nice cookies—and she would always bring them to team meetings. So that’s the sign of a good boss.

She’s good at developing unlikely allies. The way that she’s cultivated relationships with female senators and hosting dinner parties at the VP’s residence—I think some of those relationships are going to be pivotal in the success of her presidency. She understands that your network is key to success. That’s a part of her leadership, and I would expect that to be part of her presidency.

—Daniel Suvor, policy chief to Harris as Attorney General

‘She suffers no fools’

I volunteered for her [DA] campaign, and when she got into office, she called me numerous times, asking me to come and build with her and do something around recidivism. I kept turning her down because I didn’t want to work for law enforcement and I was leading [the Young Women’s Freedom Center]. One day, she finally said, “I’m not going to ask you again. Either you can stand outside with that bullhorn at every government official’s office door, begging them to do the right thing—or you could come inside and you could work for me to make the changes.” I remember getting off the phone and telling my staff: “I’m about to go work for Kamala.” She stayed in my life and pressed me to work harder, be better, come early, leave late, go to college.

I’ve worked with a lot of leaders in my life. To this day, I’ve never worked with someone who is so astute and so fearless. This thing called justice is extremely personal to her. She suffers no fools. She is the toughest boss that I’ve ever had. But she has been a seminal mentor to me. It’s why I’m running for Congress, and why I’m outworking and outraising and outbacking my opponent. 

I’m just always astonished [by] her own accountability [and] leadership, but also how she pushes people to be better. If you want to work for the people, you better have it together. Her expectations are so high in part because of who raised her. It’s not just that her mother was a scientist and a professor and had a PhD and was a single mom and expected the best, but she also saw what happens when people perceive women or immigrants or people of color as weaker than they are. So her standard of excellence, being in leadership, is so high.

Mentorship is not about scooting people along. It’s about holding you fully accountable for taking and working in a job that’s paid for by people’s tax money. She would always say, “Somebody’s grandmother is paying your salary. How dare you be late?” So I think it really comes from that ethos of accountability. She also knows that she’s been the first in every single position that she’s had. 

She’s also the funniest person that you’ll ever meet. [Harris] loves good music and would let you borrow a book off her bookshelf. But damn it, if you didn’t give that book back, she’s like, “Books are serious.”

—Lateefah Simon, current California Congressional candidate, who worked under Harris as District Attorney

‘She really approaches all tasks like an attorney’

I finished law school while I was working for the Vice President. And what I loved is that the entire office and the Vice President were so supportive of me [doing] something that was incredibly time-consuming, outside of what is a really time-consuming job. The morning after I took the bar exam, she asked me how the exam went. I told her it was challenging and I was hoping for the best, and she told me it doesn’t matter what happens because I’m brilliant either way and I shouldn’t forget that. The day I found out I passed the bar exam, she called me to tell me how proud she was of me and to say “welcome” to the legal profession. 

I truly learned so much about being a leader from Vice President Harris. The first and most important thing that she really instilled in us is that the strength of a leader is how you build people up. It’s not how you tear people down. She embodied that principle every single day, and you hear her talking about that on the campaign trail. I think that ideal is important now more than ever with the state of politics today.

The way that she approaches being a leader is always looking out for people who are overlooked or left behind. She taught us that when you’re thinking about creating policy with the goal of bettering the lives of Americans, it means all Americans—no matter their background, zip code, political affiliation. She always thinks [about]: Who’s missing? Who’s not in this conversation? Who do we need to be thinking about? 

She really approaches all tasks like an attorney, where she’s gathering the evidence and prosecuting the case. She’s really prepared before every meeting, every event, every interaction. That’s a lesson that I will carry with me in any work setting throughout the rest of my life—just the importance of being prepared. 

I really think the Vice President was such a strong leader going into this role, and every day that I worked for her reaffirmed that. Throughout her time as Vice President, there were opportunities where the American people got to see that more.

One example is reproductive rights. She has been such a forceful advocate on reproductive rights. To me, the way that she approached the overturning of Roe v. Wade really highlighted who she was as a leader. When the Dobbs decision was first leaked, the Vice President gathered her team to talk about what this would mean and how she would respond. I remember very vividly sitting in her West Wing office, when she was talking to us about charting this path forward, thinking about how lucky it was that we had Kamala Harris as the leader fighting for us on this issue.

—Rachel Palermo, communications aide to Harris as Vice President