Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, boasts a family lineage marked by academic achievement and deep-rooted Indian heritage. Her great-aunt, Shanthamma Chilukuri, at the age of 96, has been celebrated by local media as India’s oldest active professor. This testament to academic prowess runs deep within the family, with Shanthamma still traveling 60 kilometers (40 miles) most weekdays to teach physics at the university.
“Most of our family is academically strong, and education has been a top priority,” Chilukuri remarked to Reuters via phone call from Visakhapatnam. Usha Vance, 38, first stepped onto the U.S. national political stage on Wednesday, introducing her husband at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“I got to know about Usha’s husband being named as a vice president candidate, and of course, we are happy as a family,” Chilukuri expressed to Reuters.
In his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance describes his wife as a “supersmart daughter of Indian immigrants” whom he met at Yale Law School. Usha Vance’s parents, who emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1970s, currently teach engineering and molecular biology in San Diego. Their academic lineage extends to Usha Vance’s grandfather and father, both of whom taught or studied at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India’s premier engineering college.
Usha Vance’s younger sister is a mechanical engineer working for a semiconductor company in San Diego, while an aunt practices medicine in Chennai, southern India. The family’s origins trace back to a village called Vadduru in Andhra Pradesh state. However, they relocated to Chennai when Usha Vance’s paternal grandfather, Ramasastry Chilukuri, began teaching at the IIT around its establishment in 1959.
The IIT now honors Ramasastry’s legacy with a student award in his memory.
While deeply rooted in academics, the family also embraces Hinduism and religious practices. Shanthamma Chilukuri revealed that many family members are well-versed in ancient texts like the Upanishads and Vedas. She has authored a book on verses from the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text in Hinduism.
J.D. Vance disclosed in a June interview on Fox News that his wife had played a pivotal role in “re-engaging” him with his Christian faith. Usha Vance, sitting beside her husband during the interview, shared: “I did grow up in a religious household. My parents are Hindu, and that is one of the things that made them such good parents, that made them really good people. And so I have seen the power of that.”
Usha Vance’s legal career saw her serve as a law clerk to U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, later becoming an attorney at the U.S. law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. Following J.D. Vance’s nomination as the Republican vice presidential candidate, she resigned from her legal position.
A close family member from India who attended their wedding in Kentucky in 2014 attributed Usha Vance’s success to “the mindset that one must accomplish something, have degrees from top institutes.”
“Our family WhatsApp group is flooded with messages ever since J.D. Vance’s name was announced,” the family member remarked, declining to be named to avoid media attention. “I sent her a congratulatory message and conveyed my best wishes. She was also elated.”
Usha Vance’s parents and sister in the United States did not respond to requests for comment.
Indian media has lauded Usha Vance as the latest addition to a list of prominent Americans with Indian roots, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and former Republican presidential hopefuls Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy (a Yale Law classmate of J.D. and Usha Vance).
In a 2020 Netflix movie based on J.D. Vance’s memoir, Usha Vance’s character, portrayed by Indian actress Freida Pinto, describes her father’s journey to the United States. “He came here with nothing,” the character says. “He had to just find his way.”
