Usha Vance is an American lawyer who has been the second lady of the United States since January 20, 2025, being married to Vice President JD Vance. A former trial lawyer, she has also worked with justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. She is the first Indian American and Hindu American in this role.

Vance was born in San Diego County, California, to Telugu Indian immigrant parents and raised in an upper-middle-class suburb. She graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in history and from Yale Law School with a Juris Doctor degree. After law school, she served as a law clerk for several senior federal judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and Judge Amul Thapar.

In 2019, 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. She resigned from her law firm job in July 2024.

At the 2024 Republican National Convention, Vance delivered the introductory address for her husband, JD Vance. She often traveled with him to his vice-presidential campaign events, occasionally appearing onstage. The couple has three children.

Family life

Usha Bala Chilukuri was born to Krish and Lakshmi Chilukuri in a suburb of San Diego County, California, on January 6, 1986, to Telugu Indian immigrants who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s from Andhra Pradesh. Her 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.

While at Yale Law School, Usha Chilukuri met her future husband, JD Vance, a relationship encouraged by their professor Amy Chua. Chilukuri and Vance married in 2014 in Kentucky, in an interfaith marriage ceremony. The Vances reside in Cincinnati, Ohio, and have three children. (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources

• "Usha Vance." Wikipedia, revision of 15 February 2025. < link > Accessed 17 February 2025.