Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Middletown native and Vice President-elect JD Vance, will make history Monday.
With her husband set to serve alongside President-elect Donald Trump, Usha Vance will become the first Indian American second lady in the White House. She will also be the first Hindu second lady.
JD Vance thanked “my beautiful wife for making it possible to do this” on social media after multiple news organizations projected that Trump had won the presidential election over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Here’s what we know about JD Vance’s wife.
Where is Usha Vance from?
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha Vance was born and raised in San Diego, California. Her parents moved to the United States in the late 1970s and teach engineering and molecular biology, according to Reuters.
Her family, which is Hindu, is also deeply religious. In a June interview with Fox News, the vice president-elect said his wife had helped him “re-engage” with his Christian faith.
She worked as a litigator
The 39-year-old had worked as a litigator for Munger, Tolles and Olson LLP, a national firm based in San Francisco. She chose to leave her job in the wake of her husband’s vice-presidential nomination, according to a statement from the firm.
“Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career,” the statement said.
Usha Vance and JD Vance met at law school
The pair met when they were both students at Yale Law School. According to The New York Times, Usha Vance played a “quiet but significant” role in her husband’s rise, helping him organize his ideas about the social decline in rural white America, which influenced the basis of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
She earned degrees from both Yale and Cambridge.
They got married in 2014 and share three children
The couple wed in Kentucky in 2014, one year after they graduated, and were blessed by a Hindu pundit in a separate ceremony, per The New York Times.
Usha and JD Vance share three children: a 7-year-old son, Ewan, a 4-year-old son, Vivek, and a 2-year-old daughter, Mirabel.
