An accomplished litigator with an impressive academic background, Usha Chilukuri Vance, daughter of Indian immigrants, is a critical source of support to her Republican politician husband JD Vance. 

By Nichola Marie

Even as we speak, prayers are being sent up in a simple temple in the Indian village of Vadluru, seeking blessings for its daughter Usha Chilukuri Vance; specifically for her Republican politician husband James David (JD) Vance to become the vice-president of the United States. Vadluru, in the green countryside of Andhra Pradesh, is the ancestral home of Usha, who could become the US Second Lady; the first who is not white, should Donald Trump be elected this November. According to a report in ‘GulfNews.com’, the Hindu priest Subhramanya Sharma, who officiates at the Sai Baba temple in a building once owned by Usha’s family, the Chilukuris, says, “We bless her. She should get higher positions in her life.” Even though Usha’s great-grandfather moved out of Vadluru, her ancestors are looked up to in the village as “academic highflyers and well-versed in Hindu scriptures.”

In The Spotlight

As a report in ‘News 18’ states, “Whether Kamala Harris manages to overcome the usual hurdles of a woman presidential candidate in the US or Usha Vance powers her husband to overcome the usual hurdles that an American ‘redneck’ faces, either way, Indian-Americans will be key to the 2024 US elections.”

Widely described as poised, cerebral, measured, and eloquent especially after she introduced her husband JD to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee and to most of America, Usha Vance has stepped into a harsh spotlight with her husband being selected by Donald Trump to be his running mate in the 2024 presidential race. 

While one section of the desi population is pleased by the potential continued presence of an Indian-origin presence in the VP’s office, many urban Indian-Americans, who traditionally vote Democrat, are perturbed by her switch from Democrat to Republican. (Public records show Usha Vance voted in Democratic primaries as recently as 2014, but voted in the 2022 Republican primary when her husband was running.) Many non-Indian origin voters also see her as the Trump campaign’s secret weapon: An attempt to woo the rich, influential, ‘liberal’ Indian-American community with the remarkable story of Usha Vance. “The ‘good immigrant’ image of Usha’s community with many Indian Americans successfully heading major US corporations — and now even the World Bank — without demanding dilution of age-old American cultural or political principles only sharpens the Republican Party’s strong anti-illegal migrant line,” the opinion piece states. 

Over and above, Usha Vance’s appeal is seen to go beyond her ethnicity: ‘A brilliant millennial woman who boldly stepped out of her comfort zone to fall in love with a man from a very different background and lift him up’. 

A Remarkable Influence

When Usha Vance spoke at the Republican National Convention, she introduced the crowd to the “most determined person I know” – her husband JD Vance, the newly selected vice-presidential candidate. She also humanised her Ohio senator and Iraq War veteran husband, by calling him a man who longed for a “tight-knit family.” And she completed it with a compliment none could resist – “That JD and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country.” 

According to 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, Usha has been tremendously instrumental and influential in shaping him into the man he is today. He alludes to her as the “powerful female voice on his left shoulder,” giving him guidance. “People don’t realise just how brilliant she is,” he revealed, adding that she is able to digest a 1,000-page book in only a few hours. “Usha definitely brings me back to earth a little bit,” Vance said during the Megyn Kelly Show podcast in 2020. “And if I maybe get a little bit too cocky or a little too proud I just remind myself that she is way more accomplished than I am!” 

The two met when they were both students at Yale Law School. On learning that she was single, Vance immediately asked her out; after a single date, he told her he was in love with her. They married in 2014 in Kentucky, with a Hindu priest presiding over a separate ceremony. 

Vance grew up around poverty, addiction, violence and broken families. When he found himself in the so-called ‘elite’ culture of Yale Law, it was nothing short of a culture shock for him. As Vance describes in his book, Usha became his “Yale spirit guide,” helping him navigate the culture and expectations of his newfound, upper-class world. It includes giving him advice on using silverware when he called her urgently from the restroom at one such event — “Go from outside to inside, and don’t use the same utensil for separate dishes.” More importantly, as Vance tells it, “She instinctively understood the questions I didn’t even know how to ask, and she always encouraged me to seek opportunities that I didn’t know existed.”

Her intelligence and directness won Vance’s admiration, while her patience was critical to him in the early years of his new life in sophisticated America. Equally, being with Usha and her family showed Vance that families and individuals could discuss matters calmly, without resorting to anger. While Vance’s biological father had left when he was a toddler, his mother struggled with drug addiction, and he was raised by his grandparents, Usha’s parents had been stably married for decades. As Vance wrote, “Usha hadn’t learned how to fight in the hillbilly school of hard knocks. The first time I visited her family for Thanksgiving, I was amazed at the lack of drama. Usha’s mother didn’t complain about her father behind his back. There was no suggestion that good family friends were liars or backstabbers, no angry exchanges between a man’s wife and the same man’s sister. Usha’s parents seemed to genuinely like her grandmother and spoke of their siblings with love.”

He concluded, “The sad fact is that I couldn’t do it without Usha. Even at my best, I’m a delayed explosion — I can be defused, but only with skill and precision. It’s not just that I’ve learned to control myself, but that Usha has learned how to manage me.” 

Assisting Vance in organising his thoughts on the social decline in rural white America, Usha also read every single word of his ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ manuscript “literally dozens of times,” offering important feedback. She is also his greatest champion, pointing out, “I don’t think people understand how hard he works and how creative he is. Everything he says and does is built on a foundation of so much thought. He’s always trying to do better.”

Impressive Cedentials 

Born January 6, 1986 in San Diego, California, to Telugu Indian Hindu immigrants, Usha’s father Chilukuri Radhakrishnan – a PhD holder – was brought up in Chennai and went on to study in the United States. He returned to India before the couple moved back across the Pacific. While her father is a mechanical engineer and a lecturer at San Diego State University, her mother is a molecular biologist, and Provost at the University of California, San Diego. Raised in San Diego’s upper-middle-class Rancho Peñasquitos suburb, Usha graduated from Mt. Carmel High School in 2003. Described by childhood friends as a leader and a bookworm, she also performed in the marching band at school. 

Attending Yale University, she graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in history, with membership in Phi Beta Kappa. She then attended Clare College, Cambridge, in England, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, receiving a Master of Philosophy in early modern history in 2010.

In 2013, she obtained her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, where she was the Executive Development Editor of the Yale Law Journal and Managing Editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Technology. During her time at Yale, she also taught American history as a Yale-China Teaching Fellow at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.

She once clerked for Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice, on the District of Columbia court of appeals. Then she clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Both men are part of the highest court’s conservative majority.

As a litigator, she clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when Kavanaugh was a federal judge. 

A member of the DC Bar, she most recently worked as an attorney for law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP until Vance’s nomination. The firm confirmed, “Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm,” adding, “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.”

Faith & Family
The Vances have three young children – Ewan, 6, Vivek, 4, and Mirabel, 2. Describing his feelings on parenting in an earlier interview, Vance revealed, “I love being a dad and Usha loves being a mom and I think we love doing that together. And that’s not gonna change…” Responding to a query about the role their different religious faiths (Vance is Roman Catholic, Usha’s religious background is Hindu) play in raising their children, Usha said, “There are a lot of things that we just agree on, especially when it comes to family life (and) how to raise our kids. And so I think the answer really is we just talk a lot.” In another interview, she also said that the faith made her mother and father “good parents… really good people.”

The villagers of Vadluru, who now follow the couple’s campaign on YouTube and Facebook, must certainly approve!