Who is Usha Vance, the next second lady of the United States?
By Arit John and Shania Shelton, CNN
(CNN) — JD Vance has had several introductions to the American people: as the author of a memoir on what ails the White working class, a newly elected Republican senator in his home state of Ohio, a controversial running mate pick and the next vice president of the United States.
His wife, Usha, has been a key part of each iteration.
More than most political spouses, she has avoided the spotlight and favored a more private, background role on the Trump campaign. But the Yale-educated lawyer was beside her husband at Donald Trump’s election night watch party in West Palm Beach as voters made him the 47th president – and her, in turn, the first Asian American second lady. She is also the first second lady with a Hindu background.
JD Vance thanked her for “making it possible to do this” in a post on X after the Republican ticket’s win.
The future second lady has avoided talking about how she would approach the role. Asked what subject areas she’d focus on, she told NBC News last month that she would “see what happens on November 5, and collect some information myself and take it from there.”
“This is such an intense and busy experience that I have not given a ton of thought to my own roles and responsibilities,” she said. “It’s not something I’m terribly familiar with.”
The Vances, who are nearly half the former president’s age and has three young children (ages 7, 4 and 2), infused the GOP ticket with a burst of youthfulness during a cycle that had long been defined by the advanced ages of the two major-party nominees. (Democratic President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid less than a week after Vance became Trump’s running mate.)
But the Ohio senator, who has only been in office since January 2023, faced questions over both his lack of political experience and his transition from 2016 Trump critic to heir to the MAGA movement. Usha Vance played an understated but key role in helping introduce him to the public.
“Sometimes people say that he’s changed a lot, but the truth is I’ve known him now for so many years, and he’s always been so true to himself,” she told Newsmax during a 2022 interview with her husband.
While she wasn’t a vocal surrogate in her husband’s path to becoming the nation’s 50th vice president, Usha Vance made campaign appearances alongside her husband across the country, ranging from visiting a Baptist church in Damascus, Virginia, to a sports bar in Greenville, North Carolina. JD Vance said in September that his wife was doing a “little bit of homeschooling” while their kids were on the campaign trail.
In her first solo interview on Fox News in August, Usha Vance defended controversial remarks her husband made prior to joining the GOP ticket, including his deriding of childless adults. She also downplayed his labeling of some Democratic politicians as “childless cat ladies,” calling it a “quip.”
“JD, absolutely at the time and today, would never, ever, ever want to say something to hurt someone who was trying to have a family, who really was struggling with that,” she said at the time. “I also understand there are a lot of other reasons why people may choose not to have families, and many of those reasons are very good.”
For years, the senator has described his wife as a key part of his success, dating back to when the two attended law school together at Yale University, where Usha Vance also graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree.
In his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” JD Vance described her as his “Yale spirit guide,” helping him navigate life at the elite university where they met.
“She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know to ask, and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed,” he wrote.
The two were married in an interfaith ceremony in Kentucky in 2014 – Usha Vance’s family is Hindu, while her husband converted to Catholicism in 2019.
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha Chilukuri grew up in a suburb of San Diego. After college – two stints at Yale and a masters of philosophy at the University of Cambridge – she clerked for two Supreme Court justices – Brett Kavanaugh when he served on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Chief Justice John Roberts.
In 2015, she started as an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson, a law firm with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, DC. She continued working at the firm between clerkships, where – according to an archived version of her employee biography – she handled “complex civil litigation and appeals” in sectors that included “higher education, local government, entertainment, and technology, including semiconductors.”
The firm announced that she had resigned shortly after Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
“Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm,” the company said in a statement. “Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career.”
In July, as the Ohio delegation chanted her husband’s name on the Republican convention floor in Milwaukee , Usha Vance stood beside the first-term senator and applauded as he was nominated by voice vote to be Trump’s running mate.
Weeks earlier, the trial lawyer and former judicial clerk had admitted she wasn’t “raring” to completely upend the life she and her husband had built together or to face the attention that would follow.
“I don’t know that anyone is ever ready for that kind of scrutiny,” she told Fox News in June during a joint interview with the senator at their home in Ohio. “I think we found the first campaign that he embarked on to be a shock. It was so different from anything we’d ever done before. But it was an adventure.”
She added that she was open to seeing how things unfolded.
This story and headline have been updated.
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