1. Usha Bala Chilukuri Vance is an American lawyer who has been the second lady of the United States since 2025, being married to Vice President JD Vance.
31 Facts About Usha Vance
1. 2.
Usha Vance is the first Asian American and first Hindu American second lady.
3.
Usha Vance graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in history and from Yale Law School with a Juris Doctor degree.
4.
In 2019, Usha 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.
5.
Usha Vance resigned from her law firm job in July 2024.
6.
At the 2024 Republican National Convention, Usha Vance delivered the introductory address for her husband, JD Usha Vance.
7.
Usha Vance often traveled with him to his vice-presidential campaign events, occasionally appearing onstage.
8.
Usha Vance Bala Chilukuri was born on January 6,1986 in a suburb of San Diego County, California, to Lakshmi and Radhakrishna "Krish" Chilukuri, both Telugu Indian immigrants who immigrated to the US in the 1980s from Andhra Pradesh.
9.
Usha Vance's 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.
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Usha Vance was raised in San Diego's upper-middle-class Rancho Penasquitos neighborhood.
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Usha Vance then attended Clare College, Cambridge, in England, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, receiving a Master of Philosophy in early modern history in 2010.
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Usha Vance's husband has called her "brilliant" and "way more accomplished than I am".
13.
Usha Vance's parents are Telugu Brahmins from the West Godavari and Krishna districts of Andhra Pradesh, India.
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Usha Vance's family is known for its academic and scholarly background.
15.
Usha 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 John Roberts from 2017 to 2018.
16.
Usha Vance was admitted to the District of Columbia, California and Ohio bar.
17.
Usha Vance has served on the board of the Gates Cambridge Alumni Association and as secretary of the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
18.
At the Republican National Convention in July 2024, Usha Vance delivered the introductory address for her husband, JD Vance.
19.
JD Usha 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.
20.
Usha Vance received some credit for her husband's debate performance.
21.
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.
22.
Several political analysts have noted that Usha Vance has played a key role in her husband's political career.
23.
In February 2025, Usha Vance accompanied her husband on a visit to France and Germany.
24.
In March 2025, Usha Vance was selected to lead the United States presidential delegation to Italy for the 2025 Special Olympics World Winter Games.
25.
Usha Vance had been invited by American Daybreak, a group led by Tom Dans, who was an Arctic commissioner in the first Trump administration.
26.
In 2013, Chilukuri and Usha Vance collaborated to organize a discussion group at Yale focused on "social decline in white America".
27.
Chilukuri and Usha 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.
28.
Usha Vance is a practicing Hindu, and her husband a Christian who was raised Evangelical but converted to Catholicism in 2019.
29.
Usha Vance clerked for conservative judges, such as Roberts and Kavanaugh, but has practiced at a California law firm with a progressive work culture.
30.
White supremacists, including prominent far-right figures such as Nick Fuentes and Jaden McNeil, have made racist comments about Usha Vance, targeting her for her Indian heritage.
31.
JD Usha Vance defended his wife against the "ridiculous" attacks in an interview with ABC News.