Who is Usha Vance, lawyer and wife of Trump's VP pick?

Usha Vance: My husband JD a 'powerful example of the American dream'

When Usha Vance took to the stage at the Republican National Convention, she introduced the crowd to the "most determined person I know" - her husband JD Vance, the newly selected vice-presidential candidate.

"That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country," she told the crowd on Wednesday night.

Mrs Vance humanised the Ohio senator and running mate of Republican White House candidate Donald Trump by calling him a man who longed for a "tight-knit family".

She also said her husband was a "meat and potatoes kind of guy" - but one who had adapted to her vegetarian diet and even learned how to cook Indian food for her mother.

While she does not seek out the political spotlight, Mrs Vance, 38, wields considerable influence over her husband’s career, Mr Vance has said before.

Mr Vance, 39, said he considered Usha his “Yale spirit guide” when they were classmates at the elite university.

Getty Images Usha and JD Vance — Mr Vance, 39, said he considered Usha his “Yale spirit guide” when they were classmates at the elite university.

Mrs Vance - née Chilukuri, the child of Indian immigrants - was born and raised in the suburbs of San Diego, California.

The two met as students at Yale Law School in 2013, when they joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America”, according to the New York Times.

The content influenced Mr Vance's best-selling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, about his childhood in the white working-class Rust Belt, which became a 2020 movie directed by Ron Howard.

Whilst her husband regularly rails about "woke" ideas he says are pushed by Democrats, Mrs Vance was formerly a registered Democrat and is now a corporate litigator at a San Francisco law firm which proudly touts its reputation for being “radically progressive”.

Mrs Vance previously graduated with a BA in history from Yale University and was also a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University, where she came away with an MPhil in early modern history, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She once clerked for Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice, on the District of Columbia court of appeals. Then she clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Both men are part of the highest court's conservative majority.

And it is this stellar CV that leaves Mr Vance feeling “humbled” he has said.

“Usha definitely brings me back to Earth a little bit,” Mr Vance told the Megyn Kelly Show podcast in 2020. “And if I maybe get a little bit too cocky or a little too proud I just remind myself that she is way more accomplished than I am.”

“People don’t realise just how brilliant she is,” he added, saying she is able to digest a 1,000-page book in only a few hours.

She is the "powerful female voice on his left shoulder”, giving him guidance, he said.

The couple wed in 2014 and have three children: two sons, Ewan and Vivek, and a daughter, Mirabel.

As Mr Vance took the stage at the Republican convention, he echoed previous praise of his wife being an "incredible lawyer and a better mom".

In an interview on Fox News last month, she said: "I believe in JD, and I really love him, and so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our life."

"Neither JD nor I expected to find ourselves in this position," she said at the RNC.

And since then she has firmly defended her husband, particularly against recent attacks for controversial remarks he made in 2021 about Kamala Harris and other Democrats being "childless cat ladies".

Mr Vance argued that those without children should not lead the country and that women who do not have kids are "miserable".

His wife called the remarks a "quip" and said people were not looking at the large context of the comments.