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Usha Vance's classmates at Yale Law School didn't know much about her politics. Weeks before she becomes second lady, the nation doesn't know much, either.
"She was more tight-lipped, at least in my experience, with her political views," said Marvin Lim, a Democrat in the Georgia House of Representatives who also graduated in 2013. He wasn't close with either of the Vances, but said that they "certainly communicated a great deal."
"I don't remember ever having a political conversation with Usha," Elliot Forhan, a Democrat representative in Ohio who took a small class with Usha but wasn't close friends with her, said. "She just didn't really show her cards with respect to the political stuff."
Vance, 38, will make history as the nation's first Indian American and first Hindu second lady. She'll also be the second-youngest person to fill the role, after Jane Hadley Barkley, wife of former Vice President Alben Barkley in 1949.
Usha Chilukuri met JD Vance while at Yale Law School. The two were in the same small group of approximately 15 students who take all of their classes together, the New York Times reported. They got married in 2014, one year after graduating, and Lim said that their affection for each other was obvious. Less obvious, however, is Usha Vance's political orientation and relationship to the newfound national spotlight.
Vance grew up in a suburb of San Diego, raised by a mechanical engineer and a biologist. One of her family friends, Vikram Rao, told The Times that she was a natural and kind leader, selecting what games they played and setting the rules by age five.
After getting her undergraduate degree from Yale, she studied copyright law at Cambridge. In February of 2006, a campus tabloid magazine at Yale described her "as "of the leftish political persuasion," but noted that she opted for romantic partners who are "tall, handsome, and conservative." One of her friends at Cambridge, Gabriel Winant, said that her social circle was left of center and even dotted with the occasional leftist, the Times reported.
While her political views weren't recognizable to casual peers at Yale Law School, her leadership was evident. Both Forhan and Lim said that she wasn't particularly loud in class, but didn't fade into the background, either. Her drive didn't seem to extend to politics.
"She didn't express political ambitions, but she did have ambition," Lim told Business Insider, noting that she went on to have prestigious judicial clerkships after graduation. "We knew those were things she wanted to do, but not political ambitions."
A representative for Usha Vance declined to comment for this story.
After graduating from law school, Vance clerked for a pre-SCOTUS Brett Kavanaugh from 2014-2015 and Chief Justice John Roberts from 2017-2018. In addition, she worked at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, but resigned on Monday when her husband became the GOP nominee for vice president. The law firm has since removed her biography, and with it all of her past cases, though the website used to describe her as "a skilled litigator specializing in higher education, local government, and technology sectors."
The magazine The American Lawyer described Munger, Tolles & Olson as "cool, woke" in 2019, with a "radically progressive" policy on gender and racial diversity in hiring, Vanity Fair reported. Despite his wife's workplace environment, JD Vance championed the "Dismantle DEI Act" in June, 2024, calling the DEI agenda "destructive." In 2022, two colleagues at the firm described Usha Vance as liberal or moderate to The Times.
To make her political affiliations even murkier, Vance was a registered Democrat until 2014, The Times reported. Yet she shifted to the right alongside her husband — in 2021, Federal Election Commission records reveal that she donated to Blake Masters, a conservative Senate candidate in Arizona backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel. And Thiel has known JD Vance since at least 2011, when the tech magnate spoke at Yale. In 2024, Thiel was instrumental in cementing Vance's spot on the Trump ticket.
When JD Vance was himself running for Senate, Usha Vance appeared in his very first campaign ad, sitting in front of a bookshelf and talking about their three children. In an interview with Newsmax during the campaign, she said that her husband has not changed in the many years of their relationship.
After her initial appearance, Vance largely faded out of her husband's campaign, but became more active as voting day neared. The same was true of this year's presidential election: Vance introduced her husband at the Republican National Convention, but didn't speak at other public campaign events, ABC reported. She helped behind the scenes, assisting with debate prep and offering feedback on rallies, according to NBC News.
In an interview on Fox & Friends in June, Usha Vance seemed ambivalent about taking on a public political role. During the conversation, she didn't wholly embrace the possibility of becoming the second lady.
"I don't know that anyone is ever ready for that kind of scrutiny," she said. "I'm not raring to change anything about our lives are right now, but I believe in JD and I really love him, so we'll just sort of see what happens."
She declined to specify what issues she would tackle in the White House, saying that "we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves."
Vance has consistently defended her husband in the face of controversy, like when she called his infamous childless cat ladies comment a "quip."
As the election inched closer, Vance remained vague about her personal political plans.
"This is such an intense and busy experience that I have not given a ton of thought to my own roles and responsibility," she told NBC News in late October when asked what she'd focus on as second lady. "It's just something that I've never really — it's not something I'm terribly familiar with."
Vance went on to say that she'd "collect some information" and circle back to the question after November 5, depending on the election results. With the results in, she has yet share any specific plans.
While Usha Vance's political orientations and interest in life as a national figure remain foggy, her devotion to her husband has seemed strong since her days at Yale Law School.
"In terms of political beliefs, she held that close to her chest, but in terms of being supportive of JD, that does not surprise me," Lim said.
