All eyes are on the US as momentum for the presidential elections in November is starting to build. Last month, Donald Trump - who recently survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania - named the Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate at the Republican national convention.
JD Vance (short for James David) is a former venture capitalist who became widely known for Hillbilly Elegy, his bestselling memoir about his blue-collar upbringing in working-class America. In 2020, the memoir became a movie directed by Ron Howard.
However, it’s his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, who has got lots of people talking. While Usha isn’t in the political spotlight per se, JD has previously admitted he feels ‘humbled’ by his wife’s impressive CV. Usha, 38, is a corporate lawyer who used to be a registered Democrat and is the daughter of Indian immigrants and a practicing Hindu – and, according to her husband, she has a vast influence over his political moves. In the Netflix film adaptation of his memoir Usha is played by Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto.
Usha Vance made headlines this week after she defended a misogynistic comment made her husband in 2021, which has recently resurfaced. In an attempt to undermine Kamala Harris’ credentials as Vice President, he called her a ‘childless cat lady’, arguing that those without children shouldn't be leading the country and that women who don't have kids are 'miserable.'
Usha has now addressed her husband's comment, telling Fox News that the remarks were a 'quip' and she wished people would look at the larger context of what her husband said. Addressing concerns that Vance's comments were offensive to people with fertility problems, Usha said she 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 continued by saying she understands there 'are a lot of other reasons why people may choose not to have families and many of those reasons are very good.'
As JD Vance steps into his new role beside Trump, there’s lots of interest in Usha. Search for ‘JD Vance wife quote’ is up by 900% on Google, and she’s a top breakout term under his name on Google.
Here’s everything we know about Usha Chilukuri Vance…
Who is Usha Vance?
Usha Vance is the daughter of Indian immigrants and grew up in a suburb of San Diego. California called Rancho Peñasquitos. Her parents were both academics, and according to a classmate quoted in The New York Times, Usha was a ‘bookworm.'
She has an impressive educational background, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University. Afterwards she obtained a Gates Fellowship at Cambridge University and earned a degree in early modern history from Clare College in 2010.
She then relocated back to the US, where she graduated from Yale Law School in 2013. She met JD Vance while she was studying at Yale, after they both joined a discussion group on ‘social decline in white America.’ They were paired as writing partners for their first major assignment, a moment JD details in his memoir.
‘As luck would have it, we were assigned as partners for our first major writing assignment, so we spent a lot of time during that first year getting to know each other,' he wrote. ‘She seemed some sort of genetic anomaly, a combination of every positive quality a human being should have: bright, hard-working, tall, and beautiful … she had a great sense of humor and an extraordinarily direct way of speaking.’ JD also called her his ‘yale spirit guide’ in the memoir, writing ‘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.’
After her stint in academia, Usha worked as a corporate litigator at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. After leaving this firm, Usha went on to serve as a law clerk for the Supreme Court until 2018 before returning to Munger. She resigned from her position at the law firm when JD was nominated for Vice President of the Republican Party.
How old is Usha Vance?
Usha Vance is 38.
Is Usha Vance married?
Usha got married to JD Vance in an interfaith ceremony in Kentucky in 2014. The couple have three children, sons Ewan and Vivek, and a daughter, Mirabel.
During an appearance on the Morgan Kelly Show podcast in 2020, JD explained how his wife brings him ‘back to earth a little bit.’ He said ‘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.’ He went on to explain that ‘people don’t realise how brilliant she is’ and cited the fact she can read a 1,000 page book in just a few hours. ‘I’m one of those guys who really benefits from having sort of a powerful female voice over his left shoulder saying, “Don’t do that, do that.”’
Usha is equally complimentary of her husband. In an interview with 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.’
What are Usha Vance’s political views?
Usha seems to be a political paradox to her husband. She was a registered democrat up until 2014, and her old workplace is described in a 2019 The American Lawyer article as ‘cool, woke’ and ‘radically progressive.’
Meanwhile her husband is a Republican, who previously sent nominees for State Department rolls a questionnaire to determine whether they were too ‘woke.’ He also described himself as ‘pro-life’, but during his 2022 Senate campaign said he would like abortion to ‘be primarily a state issue.’
In a recent Fox News interview, she said her husband’s first campaign for Senate had been ‘a shock', continuing ‘It was so different from anything we’d done before […] but it was an adventure.’