Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Ohio Sen. JD Vance who is Donald Trump’s choice for vice president, grew up in San Diego, according to media reports and the family’s social media accounts.
Usha was born in California to Hindu immigrants from India. Her mother is a microbiologist and provost at UC San Diego and her father is an engineer. Usha graduated from Mt. Carmel High School in Rancho Peñasquitos.
She went on to Yale University, graduating in 2007, and received a master’s degree from Britain’s Cambridge University in 2009.
Usha and JD reportedly met in 2013 when they were both students at Yale Law School.
They married in 2014 and have three children: sons Ewan, 6, and Vivek, 4, and daughter Mirabel, 2.
Usha has been a litigator at the Los Angeles-based Munger, Tolles & Olson law firm since 2019, but resigned on Monday because of her husband’s new role.
Her biography page was deleted from the mto.com website, but the latest capture — from June 26 — on archive.org adds this:
“Her practice focuses on complex civil litigation and appeals in a wide variety of sectors, including higher education, local government, entertainment and technology, including semiconductors.
“Ms. Vance returned to the firm after clerking for Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court. She also clerked for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, then of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Judge Amul Thapar, then of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
“Ms. Vance received her law degree from Yale Law School, where she was executive development editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology. While at Yale, she participated in the Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic, the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.
“She holds a B.A. in history from Yale University and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Before entering law school, Ms. Vance taught American history as a Yale-China Teaching Fellow at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.
“Ms. Vance lives with her husband and three children in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is a trustee of the Washington National Opera and has served on the board of the Gates Cambridge Alumni Association and as secretary of the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.”
A report in the Indian Express added other details:
“In a Fox & Friends interview, Usha and JD discussed their differing faiths and her unwavering support for his political career. Usha, raised in a Hindu household, remarked on the importance of her religious upbringing and its influence on her support for JD.”
Usha told Fox: “There are a few different reasons. … One is that I grew up in a religious household. My parents are Hindu, and that was one of the things that made them such good parents, that makes them really very good people. And so I think I’ve seen that … the power of that in my own life, and I knew that JD was searching for something. This just felt right for him.”
JD Vance is a recently converted Roman Catholic, according to the independent Catholic news site Crux:
“He was baptized and received into the Catholic Church in 2019. And of course, on the Democratic ticket Biden is a lifelong Catholic. If Trump is elected in November, Vance will become the nation’s second Catholic vice president after Biden himself, who became the first when he served under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.”
Updated at 6:05 a.m. July 16, 2024
