Who is Usha Vance, the wife of Trump running mate JD Vance?
Former President Trump announced his pick of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee to great applause and celebration.
His announcement has thrust the junior Ohio senator’s wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, into the spotlight as well.
The Hill confirmed Wednesday that Usha Vance will also be introducing her husband on stage at the convention for his highly anticipated speech. This is the first time he will deliver a speech since getting the vice presidential nod from Trump.
Here are some things to know about Usha Vance, the 38-year-old lawyer and San Diego native.
She is the daughter of immigrants
Usha Vance is the daughter of academics Krish and Lakshmi Chilukuri. Her parents were born in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and immigrated to the United States.
Her mother is a biologist and a college provost at the University of California, San Diego; her father is an engineer and a lecturer at the college of engineering at San Diego State University.
She was born in San Diego and, according to her LinkedIn profile, attended Mt. Carmel High School. She is also a graduate of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where she won the Gates Cambridge scholarship.
She met JD Vance at Yale
JD and Usha Vance met at Yale, where she received both her undergraduate and law degrees. She spent a year clerking for future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he served as an appeals court judge in Washington, D.C., followed by a year as a law clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts.
She has worked for several years as a trial lawyer for the Munger, Tolles & Olson law firm. The firm announced Monday that she had left the firm.
In a statement, her law firm told The Hill that “Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm. 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.”
She has been a source of support for Sen. Vance
In an interview with “Fox & Friends” last month, Usha Vance made a rare appearance alongside her husband and reaffirmed her support for his bid to be Trump’s running mate.
Usha Vance, who mostly stays out of the spotlight, sounded cautious in her approach to some of the questions, which included everything from their faith to what causes she would pick up if she was to be the second lady of the United States.
She added that she doesn’t know if “anyone is ever ready for that kind of scrutiny” that comes with the role of second lady.
“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. And so I guess the way that I put it is, I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now. But I really, you know, believe in JD, and I really love him. And so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our lives,” she added.
She attributes their successful marriage to talking to each other
In the same interview, Vance said his wife was supportive of his move to reengage with his Christian faith and added that she was not of the same religion.
“I had never been baptized. You know, I was raised Christian. I’d never baptized, so I was baptized first time in 2018. She was not raised Christian [and] is actually not a Christian. But I remember when I started to reengage with my own faith. She was very supportive,” he added.
She added that she was raised in a religious household by Hindu parents. Usha Vance spoke about merging two faiths in one house and said there “are a lot of things that we just agree on” when it comes to family life and how to raise kids. They have three children named Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.
“And so I think the answer really is we just talk a lot,” she added.
She is mentioned in Vance’s memoir
Vance mentioned his now wife, then-girlfriend, in his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” where the beginning of their relationship is documented. She was also played by “Slumdog Millionaire” actor Freida Pinto in the movie version of the memoir.
“Usha was like my Yale spirit guide. 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,” the Ohio senator wrote in his memoir.
The Ohio Republican also told Megyn Kelly on her podcast in 2020 that he benefits from having a “powerful female voice” advising him.
“I’m one of those guys who really benefits from having, like, a sort of powerful female voice on his left shoulder saying, ‘Don’t do that, do do that’ — it just is important,” he said.
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