Unlike her husband, Vice President JD Vance, Second Lady Usha Vance was mostly unknown before she stepped into the limelight as the spouse of the Republican running mate last year.
Vance, 40, was already well-known for his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy (2016) before he entered politics, as well as for having been a scathing critic of Trump before running for office, at which point he underwent a Damascene conversion and hailed him as a great president.
Many will now be acquainted with his journey from the US Marine Corps to Capitol Hill by way of Ohio State University, Yale Law School and a stint in San Francisco as a venture capitalist with Mithril Capital Management, a firm co-founded by the billionaire Peter Thiel.
Less well-known is the story of Usha Chilukuri Vance.
A former Democrat, she joined her husband at the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2024 as he was unveiled as Trump’s prospective second vice president, following in the footsteps of Mike Pence.
The daughter of academics Dr Krish Chilukuri and Professor Lakshmi Chilukuri, Hindu immigrants from Andhra Pradesh, India, the 39-year-old was raised in the Rancho Penasquitos suburb of San Diego, California.
Remembered as a “bookworm” by childhood friends in a New York Times profile, she attended Mount Carmel High School in her hometown and then Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where she graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in history.
She then relocated to England as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, earning a Master of Philosophy degree in early modern history at Clare College, Cambridge University, in 2010.
Returning to New Haven, she graduated from Yale Law School in 2013, having also served as executive development editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology.
After leaving academia, she worked as a corporate litigator at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in their San Francisco and Washington D.C. offices, originally from 2015 to 2017 and then again from 2019 until last year. She reportedly handed in her notice within minutes of Trump’s announcement that he was selecting her husband to be his running mate.
In between those two stints with Munger, she served as a law clerk at the US Supreme Court, clerking for Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as the Trump-nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Judge Amul Thapar.
Chilukuri met Vance at Yale in the 2010s when they were classmates; the couple were reportedly collaborating on the organization of a discussion group on “social decline in white America,” later the subject of Vance’s book, which he was encouraged to write by their professor Amy Chua, also an early champion of the couple’s relationship.
Vance married his “Yale spirit guide” in Kentucky in 2014, and the couple have three children: Ewan (born 2017), Vivek (2020), and Mirabel (2021).
The politician is generally private about his family life but did read Dr Seuss’s book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! on the Senate floor this February in honour of Vivek’s birthday.
In Ron Howard’s Netflix adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy (2020), which starred Amy Adams and Glenn Close, Chilukuri was portrayed by the actress Freida Pinto.
Asked by Fox News last year whether she was ready for the national spotlight, she answered: “I don’t know that anyone is ever ready for that kind of scrutiny. I mean, I think we found the first campaign that he embarked on to be a shock. It was so different from anything we’d done before. But it was an adventure.
“And so I guess the way that I’d put it is, I’m not raring to change anything about our lives right now, but I believe in JD and I really love him. And so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our life. We’re open.”
The second lady is heading to Greenland on Thursday in a visit to a territory Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex. Greenland is an autonomous region of Denmark.
She’s visiting alongside her son and will stay until Saturday.
The Second Lady will “visit historical sites, learn about Greenlandic heritage, and attend the Avannaata Qimussersu, Greenland’s national dogsled race,” the White House said in a statement.
The race features 737 mushers and 444 dogs in a “remarkable display of speed, skill, and teamwork,” the statement said. Vance and “the delegation are excited to witness this monumental race and celebrate Greenlandic culture and unity,” it added.
In a separate trip earlier this week, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is also visiting the island along with Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Greenland’s prime minister Mute B. Egede was quoted in a Greenlandic newspaper Sunday furiously questioning why Vance and Waltz were visiting.
“We are now at a level where it can in no way be characterized as a harmless visit from a politician's wife,” Egede said, according to Greenland’s Sermitsiaq newspaper. “What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”
“He is Trump's confidential and closest advisor, and his presence in Greenland alone will certainly make the Americans believe in Trump's mission, and the pressure will increase after the visit,” Egede added.
Starmer and Trump hold trade deal talks amid tariff threats - latest
Scotland avoided PPE ‘VIP lane’ due to devolution, UK Covid-19 Inquiry told
Trump sending Usha Vance and top security official to Greenland: Live
Town turns red as funeral held for 10-year-old Man United fan Poppy Atkinson
‘He dumped Biden like a dog’: Trump fumes over George Clooney’s 60 Minutes interview
Person who called 911 for deceased former US attorney ‘refused’ to perform CPR
