Usha Vance

Usha Bala Chilukuri was born in San Diego County in 1986 to Telugu immigrants and grew up in an upper-middle-class suburb. She took a history degree at Yale, then a JD from Yale Law, and clerked for a string of senior federal judges - Amul Thapar, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts. Admitted to the DC Bar in 2019, she spent the next five years at a firm handling appeals and civil litigation across higher education, local government, entertainment, and tech. In July 2024 she resigned, and weeks later walked onstage at the Republican National Convention to deliver the opening speech for JD Vance's vice-presidential campaign. When he won, she became second lady - the first Indian American, the first South Asian American, the first Hindu American to hold the role.