'My Parents Are Hindu': JD Vance's Wife Usha's Andhra Connect, And How She Met The US Vice President

While a lot is already known about JD Vance, Indian-American Usha Chilukuri Vance traces her origins to Andhra Pradesh and had once said her parents are Hindu.

She has been by Vance’s side throughout his political career and community initiatives.

WHO IS USHA VANCE?

According to a report with the BBC, Usha Vance was born and raised in the working-class suburbs of San Diego, California. She graduated with a BA in history from Yale University and was also a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University, where she came away with an MPhil in early modern history.

While Vance’s mother is a molecular biologist, her father is a mechanical engineer.

Usha Vance’s father and grandfather both taught or studied at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

Her younger sister is a mechanical engineer with a semiconductor company in San Diego, and one of her aunts is a medical professional in Chennai.

The family is originally from a village called Vadduru in Andhra Pradesh, but moved to Chennai when Usha Vance’s paternal grandfather, Ramasastry Chilukuri, went to teach at the IIT there around the time it was set up in 1959.

The IIT now runs a student award in the memory of Ramasastry, who used to teach physics.

Usha Vance’s parents had moved to the United States from Andhra Pradesh in the late 1970s.

During an interview, Usha Vance had said, “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."

HOW DID USHA VANCE MEET JD VANCE?

The report suggests Usha was a student at Yale Law School in 2010 when she met JD Vance. Later, they joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America".

The experience influenced her future husband’s bestselling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, about his childhood in the white working-class US Rust Belt. It became a 2020 movie directed by Ron Howard.

In his book, Vance wrote about how he “fell hard" for Usha at Yale, describing her as a “genetic anomaly" because she possessed so many ideal qualities.

The book also recalls how Vance “violated every rule of modern dating" by telling her he was in love after one date.

Charles Tyler, now a law professor, told the BBC that Usha Vance would take time to advise other students on how to apply for the highly prized judicial clerkships that she wanted.

In a 2020 Netflix movie based on JD Vance’s memoir, Usha Vance’s character describes how her father started from scratch when he first moved to the United States.

“He came here with nothing. He had to just find his way," said the character played by Freida Pinto.

USHA VANCE WORKED AT A LAW FIRM

In 2015, Usha Vance was a law clerk to US Chief Justice John Roberts.

She later became an attorney at US law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, a law firm with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, DC.

She continued working at the firm between clerkships, where, according to an archived version of her employee biography, she handled “complex civil litigation and appeals" in sectors that included “higher education, local government, entertainment, and technology, including semiconductors."

She resigned after JD Vance was named as the Republican vice presidential candidate.