Yale Law professor Amy Chua played a critical role in bolstering Vance's profile when she encouraged him to write his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy."
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Sen. JD Vance of Ohio has come a long way since graduating from Yale Law School in 2013.
The former venture capitalist-turned-politician's career trajectory got a big boost on Monday when former President Donald Trump named him running mate.
"As Vice President, JD will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our troops, and will do everything he can to help me make America great again," Trump said in a Truth Social post.
Vance does have benefactors, like tech billionaire Peter Thiel. But before Thiel, Vance caught a big break when he was still in law school.
The Marine veteran enrolled at Yale Law School in 2010 after graduating from Ohio State University.
In his 2016 memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," Vance likened his year at the Ivy League institution to attending a kind of "nerd Hollywood." Besides earning his law degree, Yale would also be where the seeds of his political career would be sown.
It was at Yale where Vance gained a mentor in the form of his contract law professor, Amy Chua, 61.
Chua, who earned her bachelor's and law degree from Harvard, pursued a career in corporate law before leaving for academia. She first taught at Duke Law School before joining Yale in 2001.
Chua, who gained notoriety for her 2011 memoir "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," encouraged Vance to write "Hillbilly Elegy."
"I always thought JD was destined for great things, and that going the conventional route would actually slow him down," Chua said of Vance in a 2017 interview with The Atlantic.
Representatives for Vance and Chua did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
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Besides reading Vance's drafts, Chua introduced him to her own literary agent, Tina Bennett. In the "Acknowledgments" section of "Hillbilly Elegy," Vance thanked both Bennett and Chua for their support.
"Besides Tina, the person who deserves the most credit for this book's existence is Amy Chua, my Yale contracts professor, who convinced me that both my life and the conclusions I drew from it were worth putting down on paper," Vance wrote.
"She has the wisdom of a respected academic and the confident delivery of a Tiger Mother, and there were many times that I needed (and benefited) from both," he continued.
Chua was also a huge cheerleader for Vance's book, which she helped to promote.
"When the book first came out, she probably emailed every single television producer and personality in the United States of America," Vance told The Atlantic in 2017.
"It's true, I emailed everybody. There were these creepy emails to people like Tom Brokaw, with lots of smiley faces and exclamation points," Chua said in the same interview.
The efforts ended up paying off, with "Hillbilly Elegy" becoming a bestseller in 2016. The book has sold at least 1.6 million copies to date, according to market research company Circana, the AP reports.
Vance's public profile was boosted even further after Trump's victory in 2016's presidential election.
Some news outlets even started calling Vance the "Trump whisperer" because of the book's focus on the poverty and social decay that was afflicting America's Rust Belt states.
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In his memoir, Vance said he'd asked Chua to recommend him for a federal judge clerkship. Chua agreed, though she ultimately tried to dissuade him from proceeding with his application.
"I think you're doing this for the credential, which is fine, but the credential doesn't actually serve your career goals," Chua told Vance, who was already in a relationship with his law school classmate Usha Chilukuri, per Vance's memoir.
"This clerkship is the type of thing that destroys relationships. If you want my advice, I think you should prioritize Usha and figure out a career move that actually suits you," Chua said.
Vance ended up following Chua's advice. He married Chilukuri in 2014, a year after graduating from Yale.
"Amy's advice stopped me from making a life-altering decision. It prevented me from moving a thousand miles away from the person I eventually married," Vance wrote in his memoir.
"Most important, it allowed me to accept my place at this unfamiliar institution — it was okay to chart my own path and okay to put a girl above some shortsighted ambition. My professor gave me permission to be me," he added.
That said, a lot has happened after Vance left Yale to start his career.
Vance, who told a former Yale classmate in 2016 that he thought Trump could become "America's Hitler," has since metamorphosed into a devout supporter of the former president.
In 2022, Vance was elected as Ohio's junior senator after securing Trump's endorsement.
I'm incredibly honored to have President Trump's support. He was an incredible fighter for hard working Americans in the White House, he will be again, and I'll fight for the America First Agenda in the Senate. https://t.co/s3d3JhTgBC
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) April 15, 2022
It is not clear how Chua feels about Vance's abrupt turn toward Trump and the politics now he represents. The celebrity professor came under fire in 2018 after she endorsed Brett Kavanaugh when Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court.
Chua, who continues to teach at Yale, declined to comment on her one-time protégé's embrace of Trumpism in an interview with the Financial Times' Edward Luce in 2021.
"I never turn on my students," she said.
