Usha Vance facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Usha Vance
Official portrait, 2025
Second Lady of the United States
Incumbent
Assumed role January 20, 2025
President	Donald Trump
Preceded by	Doug Emhoff (as Second Gentleman)
Personal details
Born	Usha Bala Chilukuri (1986-01-06) January 6, 1986 (age 39) San Diego County, California, U.S.
Political party	Republican (since 2022)
Other political affiliations	Democratic (until 2014) Independent (2014–2022)
Spouse	JD Vance ​ (m. 2014)​
Children	Ewan Vivek Mirabel
Education	Yale University (BA, JD) Clare College, Cambridge (MPhil)

Usha Bala Chilukuri Vance (born January 6, 1986) is an American lawyer who has been the second lady of the United States as the wife of Vice President JD Vance since January 20, 2025. She is the first Asian American and Hindu in this role.

Vance was born in San Diego County, California, to Telugu Indian immigrant parents and raised in an upper-middle-class suburb. She graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in history and from Yale Law School with a Juris Doctor degree. After law school, she served as a law clerk for multiple federal judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and Judge Amul Thapar.

In 2019, Vance was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar, and she subsequently worked for a leading law firm handling civil litigation and appeals in cases involving higher education, local government, entertainment, and technology. She resigned from her law firm job in July 2024.

At the 2024 Republican National Convention, Vance delivered the introductory address for her husband, JD Vance. She often traveled with him to his vice-presidential campaign events, occasionally appearing onstage. The couple have three children.

Early life and education

Usha Bala Chilukuri was born to Krish and Lakshmi Chilukuri in a suburb of San Diego County, California, on January 6, 1986, to Telugu Indian immigrants. Her father is a mechanical engineer from IIT Madras and a lecturer at San Diego State University, and her mother is a molecular biologist and provost at the University of California, San Diego. Her parents are from the Telugu community in Andhra Pradesh, India. They immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s. She was raised in San Diego's upper-middle-class Rancho Peñasquitos neighborhood.

In 2003, Vance graduated from Mt. Carmel High School, where she performed on flute in the marching band. She has one sister, Shreya. Childhood friends described her as a "leader" and a "bookworm". She attended Yale University, graduating summa cum laude in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in history, with membership in Phi Beta Kappa. During her time at Yale, Vance volunteered in local elementary schools, served as a Girl Scouts troop leader, and became the editor-in-chief of Our Education, an education policy publication. After graduating, she taught English and American history as a Yale–China Teaching Fellow at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Vance then attended Clare College, Cambridge, in England, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, receiving a Master of Philosophy in early modern history in 2010.

In 2013, Vance obtained her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, where she was the executive development editor of the Yale Law Journal, managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology, and an editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. During her time at Yale Law, she participated in the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic, the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, and the Pro Bono Network. Her husband has called her "brilliant" and "way more accomplished than I am".

Family background

Usha Vance's parents are Telugu Brahmins from the West Godavari and Krishna districts of Andhra Pradesh, India. Her paternal ancestry can be traced to Chilukuri Buchipapayya Sastri (c. 18th century), who lived in Saipuram in Vuyyuru Mandal of Krishna district. A branch of her family later migrated to Vadluru near Tanuku in West Godavari district. Usha's mother, Lakshmi, is from Pamarru in Krishna district.

Her family is known for its academic and scholarly background. Usha's paternal grandfather, Chilukuri Rama Sastri, taught physics at IIT Madras, and the institute now runs a student award in his memory. Her great-aunt Chilukuri Santhamma resides in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, teaches physics at a private university, and has written an English interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu sacred text.

Career

Vance served as a law clerk for Judge Amul Thapar of the District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky from 2013 to 2014, Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2014 to 2015, and Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts from 2017 to 2018.

Vance worked for the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson for its San Francisco and Washington, D.C. offices as an associate for almost six years, handling civil litigation and appeals in cases involving higher education, local government, entertainment and technology, until July 2024, when she resigned "to focus on caring for our family". Among her clients were the Paramount Pictures, Regents of the University of California, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and a division of The Walt Disney Company. Vance previously worked as a summer associate at Williams & Connolly, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, and Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz. She was admitted to the District of Columbia, California and Ohio bar.

Vance has served on the board of the Gates Cambridge Alumni Association and as secretary of the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

JD Vance's vice-presidential campaign

At the Republican National Convention in July 2024, Usha Vance delivered the introductory address for her husband, JD Vance. Since then, she has been an advisor to her husband, and often travels with him to campaign events, occasionally appearing onstage with him. According to some sources, she helped her husband prepare for the 2024 vice-presidential debate. JD Vance was declared the winner of the debate by several columnists, including some from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times. Usha Vance also received some credit for her husband's debate performance.

Second Lady of the United States

Usha Vance (center) looks on as her husband takes the oath of office

In November 2024, as JD Vance became the vice president-elect of the United States, Usha Vance assumed the role of Second Lady of the United States Designate. In January 2025, she became the first Indian American, the first Asian American, the first Telugu, and the first Hindu Second Lady.

Personal life

While at Yale Law School, Usha Chilukuri met her future husband, JD Vance, a relationship encouraged by their professor Amy Chua. Chua has called their relationship "extremely unlikely, almost opposites of personality". In 2013, Chilukuri and Vance collaborated to organize a discussion group at Yale focused on "social decline in white America". Vance often called Chilukuri his "Yale spirit guide".

Chilukuri and Vance married in 2014 in Kentucky, in an interfaith marriage ceremony, her husband's friend Jamil Jivani read from the Bible and a Hindu pandit blessed the couple. She is a practicing Hindu, and her husband a Christian who was raised Evangelical but converted to Catholicism in 2019.

The Vance couple have three children and are residents of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Usha Vance is a vegetarian who said at the Republican National Convention in 2024 that JD Vance has "adapted to my vegetarian diet and learned to cook food from my mother—Indian food.”

Charity work

She is a trustee of the Washington National Opera. Previously, she served on the board of the Gates Cambridge Alumni Association and as secretary of the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Politics

According to public records, in 2014 Chilukuri voted in the Democratic primaries, and was registered as an independent in 2017, but in 2022, she voted in the Republican primary in which her husband was a candidate. She clerked for conservative judges, such as Roberts and Kavanaugh, but has also practiced at a California law firm with a progressive work culture. According to The New York Times, her political views seem to have changed over the years, as in 2021, she made a political contribution to national conservative Blake Masters in his campaign to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate.

See also

In Spanish: Usha Vance para niños