"My background is very different from JD's."
The US presidential election was historic for several reasons and among them is Usha Vance becoming the new second lady.
Donald Trump scored a stunning victory over Kamala Harris to become US President once again.
The Republicans’ victory means JD Vance will become Vice President.
On social media, JD Vance thanked “my beautiful wife for making it possible to do this”.
At 38, Usha Vance will be the youngest second lady since the Truman administration, when Jane Hadley Barkley, wife of former Vice President Alben Barkley, assumed the role in 1949.
She will also be the first US Indian second lady in the White House.
Mrs Vance was raised in a Hindu household in San Diego, California.
The Vances met as students at Yale Law School when they joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America”.
This influenced Mr Vance’s best-selling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, about his childhood in the white working-class Rust Belt, which became a 2020 movie directed by Ron Howard.
Mrs Vance previously graduated with a BA in history from Yale University and was also a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University, where she came away with an MPhil in early modern history.
The couple married in 2014 and have three children – Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.
Mrs Vance is an attorney who once clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
She left her law firm after her husband was formally announced as Trump’s running mate in July 2024.
At the Republican National Convention, Usha Vance introduced her husband.
She said: “My background is very different from JD’s. I grew up in San Diego, in a middle-class community with two loving parents, both immigrants from India, and a wonderful sister.
“That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country.”
On the campaign trail, Mrs Vance took on a more behind-the-scenes role, not delivering any speeches at a public campaign event.
She explained: “Obviously, at the convention, I was asked to introduce JD, and so that was an active role.
“But the thing that JD asked, and the thing that I certainly agreed to do, is to keep him company.”
At the time, Mrs Vance said she had not given much thought to what causes or initiatives she might focus on if she became the second lady.
She said: “You know, this is such an intense and busy experience that I have not given a ton of thought to my own roles and responsibilities.
“And so I thought, what would I do? See what happens on November 5, and collect some information myself and take it from there.
“There are certainly things I’m interested in, but I don’t really know how that all fits into this role.”
Usha Vance discussed with Fox & Friends how she and her husband share different political views and suggested that their opinions influence each other in a “nice give and take”.
“I mean, we’re two different people. We have lots of different backgrounds and interests and things like that, so we come to different conclusions all the time.
“That’s part of the fun of being married.”
Whilst Mr Vance regularly discusses “woke” ideas that Democrats allegedly push, Mrs Vance was formerly a registered Democrat and is now a corporate litigator at a San Francisco law firm which proudly touts its reputation for being “radically progressive”.
Mrs Vance also responded to her husband’s widely criticised “childless cat ladies” comment, which was directed at Kamala Harris and others in a resurfaced 2021 Fox News interview.
She said: “He made a quip in service of making a point that he wanted to make that was substantive.
“And I just wish sometimes that people would talk about those things and that we would spend a lot less time just sort of going through this three-word phrase or that three-word phrase.”
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