Harris Works to Build Bridges to the Business World

Some leading business executives say they don’t know quite what to think of Vice President Kamala Harris. In recent months, even before becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, she has been trying to change that.

She has been meeting with groups of corporate executives roughly every two months at her residence in Washington, according to two executives who have met with her. When a state dinner was held for President William Ruto of Kenya in May, Ms. Harris spoke with businesspeople about economic topics including access to labor and worker training, one attendee said.

And a month earlier, she attended an event at the Colette Club on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan arranged by Charles Phillips, a business executive and a longtime backer. Before about 30 Black business leaders — a group with which she has tried to build particularly strong relationships — Ms. Harris spoke for roughly 40 minutes, without notes or a teleprompter, on economic topics including job creation, inflation and global trade, and then took questions.

“People showed up and really liked what she had to say,” Mr. Phillips said. “The feedback was great.”

Pursuing the presidential nomination in 2020, Ms. Harris would often declare to business audiences, “I’m a capitalist” — a stark contrast in tone from the Democratic Party’s progressive wing. But she remains a bit of an enigma in the business world.

She has been making regular fund-raising trips to New York and other financial havens for the better part of the decade — starting before her 2016 Senate campaign in California — but she has been a rarer presence since then, according to three prominent financiers who have met with her.