Ivanka Trump

Ivanka Trump

Official portrait, 2020

Director of the Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship

In office

c. April 2017 – January 20, 2021

President Donald Trump

Preceded by Position established

Succeeded by Position abolished

Advisor to the President[n 1]

In office

March 29, 2017 – January 20, 2021

Serving with
Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller

President Donald Trump

Preceded by Stephanie Cutter (2011)

Succeeded by Mike Donilon

Anita Dunn
 Gene Sperling

Neera Tanden

Mitch Landrieu

Julie Rodriguez

Keisha Lance Bottoms

Personal details

Born Ivana Marie Trump

October 30, 1981 (age 42)

New York City, U.S.

Political party Republican (2018–present)[1]

Democratic (1999–2018)[1]

Jared Kushner
Spouse

(m. 2009)

Children 3

• Donald Trump
Parents
• Ivana Trump

Relatives Trump family

Education University of Pennsylvania (BS)

Ivanka Trump's voice

Duration: 48 seconds.0:48
Ivanka Trump speaks on the G20 Osaka Summit
Recorded June 28, 2019

Ivana Marie "Ivanka" Trump (/ɪˈvɑːŋkə/; born October 30, 1981) is an American businesswoman
who is the second child of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, and his first
wife, Ivana, as well as the elder of his two daughters. She was a senior advisor in his
administration (2017–2021), and also was the director of the Office of Economic Initiatives and
Entrepreneurship.[2][3][4]
Trump was an executive vice president of her family-owned Trump Organization. She was also a
boardroom judge on her father's TV show, The Apprentice.[5][6][7] Starting in March 2017, Trump left
the Trump Organization to become a senior adviser in her father's presidential
administration alongside her husband, Jared Kushner. While serving in the White House, she
continued to operate her clothing brand business until July 2018, which raised ethics concerns,
specifically conflicts of interest.[8] She was part of the president's inner circle prior to becoming an
official employee in his administration.[9]
Early life and education
Ivana Marie Trump[10] was born on October 30, 1981,[11] in Manhattan, New York City, as the
second child and only daughter of Donald Trump and his first wife, Czech-American
model Ivana (née Zelníčková).[12][13] Her father has German[14] and Scottish ancestry.[15] For most of
her life, she has been nicknamed "Ivanka", a Slavic diminutive form of her first name
Ivana.[16][17] Her parents divorced in 1990 when she was nine years old.[18] She has two
brothers, Donald Jr. and Eric, a half-sister, Tiffany, and a half-brother, Barron.
Trump attended Christ Church and the Chapin School in Manhattan until age 15 when she
switched to Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut.[19] When Trump was attending
boarding school as a teenager, she began modeling "on weekends and holidays and absolutely
not during the school year," according to her late mother, Ivana.[20] In May 1997, she was featured
on the cover of Seventeen which ran a story on "celeb moms & daughters".[21][20]
After graduating from Choate in 2000,[22] Trump attended Georgetown University for two years
before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, from which she graduated cum laude with a
bachelor's degree in economics in 2004.[23][24] She was the first Jewish member of a first family,
having converted before marrying her husband, Jared Kushner, in 2009.[25][26][27]
Career
Business
After graduating from Wharton, her father's alma mater, Trump briefly worked for Forest City
Ratner.[28] As Executive Vice President of Development & Acquisitions of The Trump Organization,
she was charged with the domestic and global expansion of the company's real estate
interests.[29] Trump led the Request for Proposal (RFP) with the GSA in February 2012, resulting in
the final selection of The Trump Organization to develop the historic Old Post Office in
Washington, D.C.[30][31] She then oversaw the $200-million conversion of the historic building into a
luxury hotel, which opened in 2016.[32][33][34] Soon after joining the Trump Organization in an
executive position, she started her jewelry, shoe, and apparel lines which were covered in
magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Forbes Life, Golf Magazine, Town & Country,
and Vogue.[35][36] She was featured on the cover of Stuff in August 2006 and again in September
2007.[37]
Independent of her family's real estate business, Trump also had her own line of Ivanka
Trump fashion items, which included clothes, handbags, shoes, and accessories, available in U.S.
and Canadian department stores including Macy's and Hudson's Bay.[38]

Trump in July 2007

Trump formed a partnership in 2007 with Dynamic Diamond Corp., the company of diamond
vendor Moshe Lax, to create Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, a line of diamond and gold jewelry sold
at her first flagship retail store in Manhattan.[39][40] Her flagship moved from Madison Avenue to
109 Mercer Street, a larger space in the SoHo district in November 2011.[41][42] Celebrities were
spotted wearing her jewelry including Jennifer Lopez on the cover of Glamour[43] and Rihanna on
the cover of W Magazine.[44] Her brand was named "Launch of the Year' in 2010 by Footwear
News.[45] Trump's brand also went on to win other awards.[46] Members of 100 Women in Hedge
Funds elected Trump to their board in December 2012.[47] Her company eventually grew to over
$500 million in sales annually.[48] Trump closed down the company and separated herself from her
business affiliations at the Trump Organization after she moved to D.C. to serve as a senior
advisor to her father in the White House.[49][50]
Between 2010 and 2018 Trump was also a paid consultant for The Trump Organization. This
"non-employee" dual status has been questioned while reviewing taxes and financial
disclosures.[51][52]
Trump's flagship store on Mercer Street was reported to be closed in October 2015, and her brand
was available at various retail locations including Trump Tower, Hudson's Bay, and fine-jewelry
stores.[53][54] She also had her own line of fashion items available in department stores.[55] Her brand
faced criticism for using rabbit fur and was involved in a design infringement lawsuit with
Aquazzura Italia SRL, which was later settled.[56][57][58][59][60] Ivanka Trump-brand shoes were supplied
by Chengdu Kameido Shoes and Hangzhou HS Fashion.[61] The Accessories Council Excellence
Awards recognized Trump with the Breakthrough Award, presented by designer Carolina Herrera
in 2015.[62]
Between March and July 2016, Trump applied for 36 trademarks in China. Seven of them were
approved between her father's inauguration in January 2017 and Chinese President Xi Jinping's
state visit in the U.S. in April. Three provisional trademarks for handbags, jewelry, and spa
services were granted on the day Xi dined with President Trump and his family at Mar-a-
Lago.[63] According to a trademark lawyer, the process usually takes 18 to 24 months. A Chinese
government spokesman said that "the government handles all trademark applications
equally."[64] The Washington Post reported in 2017, “an astounding 258 trademark applications
were lodged under variations of Ivanka, Ivanka Trump and similar- sounding Chinese characters
between Nov 10 and the end of last year... none appear to have a direct business link with the US
president’s daughter.”[65]
Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom dropped Trump's fashion line due to poor sales in 2017, and other
retailers followed.[66][67] Three members of China Labor Watch were arrested in China while
investigating a company that produces shoes for American brands, including Trump's
brand.[68][69] Trump announced in July 2018 that she shut down her company after deciding to
pursue a career in public policy instead of returning to her fashion business.[70][71][8]
Television
Trump filled in for Carolyn Kepcher on five episodes of the fifth season of her father's television
program The Apprentice, first appearing to help judge the Gillette task in week 2.[72] Like Kepcher,
Trump visited the site of the tasks and spoke to the teams.[37] Trump collaborated with season 5
winner Sean Yazbeck on his winner's project of choice, Trump SoHo Hotel-
Condominium.[73][74][75] She replaced Kepcher as a primary boardroom judge during the sixth season
of The Apprentice and its follow-up iteration, Celebrity Apprentice.[76]
In 1997, at the age of 15, Trump co-hosted the Miss Teen USA Pageant, which was partially
owned by her father, Donald Trump, from 1996 to 2005.[20] In 2006, she was a guest judge
on Project Runway's third season. She reappeared as a guest judge on season 4 of Project
Runway All Stars in 2014 and 2015.[77] In 2010, Trump and her husband made a cameo portraying
themselves in Season 4 Episode 6 of Gossip Girl.[78]
Modeling
While Trump was attending boarding school as a teenager, she also began modeling "on
weekends and holidays and absolutely not during the school year," according to her mother, Ivana
Trump.[79] She was featured in advertisements for Tommy Hilfiger,[79] Elle,[80] Vogue,[81] Teen
Vogue,[82] Harper's Bazaar,[83] and Thierry Mugler,[84] She also engaged in fashion
runway work.[85][84][86][87] In May 1997, she was featured on the cover of Seventeen.[88] Trump has been
profiled in many women's fashion magazines, including Vogue,[26] Glamour,[89] Marie
Claire,[90] and Elle.[91] She was featured on covers such as Harper's Bazaar,[83] Forbes, Forbes
Life,[92] Marie Claire, Golf Digest,[93] Town & Country,[94] Elle
Décor,[95] Shape,[96] and Stuff magazine.[97] Trump was featured in Vanity Fair's annual International
Best Dressed List in 2007 and 2008.[98]
Books
In October 2009, Trump's first self-help book, The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and
Life, was published; according to ghostwriter Daniel Paisner, he co-wrote the book.[99][100] In May
2017, her second self-help book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, was
published; as a standard practice, she used the services of a writer, a researcher, and a fact-
checker.[101][102][103] The book debuted in the number four spot in the "Advice, How-To and Misc."
category of The New York Times Best Seller list. Trump announced that she would donate the
unpaid portion of her advance and all future royalties received from Women Who Work to the
Ivanka M. Trump Charitable Fund, which says that it makes grants that empower women and
girls.[104] She donated $200,000 in royalties to the National Urban League and the Boys and Girls
Clubs of America.[105] Trump also funded a Women's Entrepreneur Center at the National Urban
League in Baltimore, Maryland, after visiting the facility with Marc Morial, President of the National
Urban League.[101]
Trump campaign and administration
2016 presidential campaign and election
Trump introduced her father at Trump Tower in 2015 as he announced his candidacy for
president of the United States.[106][107] She publicly endorsed his presidential campaign and made
public appearances supporting and defending him.[108][109][110] However, she admitted mixed feelings
about his presidential ambitions, saying in October 2015, "As a citizen, I love what he's doing. As a
daughter, it's obviously more complicated."[111]

Speaking at her father's presidential campaign in September 2016.

In January 2016, Trump praised her father in a radio ad that aired in the early voting states
of Iowa and New Hampshire.[112][113] She appeared by his side following the results of early voting
states in 2016, in particular briefly speaking in South Carolina.[114][115] She was not able to vote in the
New York primary in April 2016 because she had missed the October 2015 deadline to change her
registration to Republican.[116]
Trump introduced her father in a speech immediately before his own speech at the 2016
Republican National Convention (RNC) in July.[117] The George Harrison song "Here Comes the
Sun" was used as her entrance music. She stated, "One of my father's greatest talents is the
ability to see the potential in people", and said he would "Make America Great Again."[118] Her
speech was well received as portraying Donald Trump "in a warmer-than-usual light", according
to The Washington Post.[119] After the speech, viewers commented that the speech was "one of the
best – if not the best – of the night," and that Trump is the "greatest asset Donald Trump
has".[120] Others said that her speech was the "high point of the convention".[121]
An earlier Post article had questioned whether the policy positions Ivanka Trump espoused were
closer to those of Hillary Clinton than to those of her father.[122] After the speech, the George
Harrison estate complained about the use of his song as being offensive to their wishes.[123] The
next morning, Ivanka's official Twitter account tweeted, "Shop Ivanka's look from her #RNC
speech" with a link to a Macy's page that featured the dress she wore.[124]
After her father's election, Trump wore a bracelet on a 60 Minutes segment with her family, which
her company then used in a marketing effort. When asked about it, she pointed to a marketing
employee at one of her companies.[125]
In 2017, artist Richard Prince returned a $36,000 payment he received in 2014 for a work
depicting Trump as a protest against her father.[126] A coalition of New York art world figures
unhappy with President Trump started an Instagram account called Dear Ivanka to protest against
Donald Trump's presidency.[127]
Trump attended the inauguration of her father as the 45th president of the United States, at
the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. She partly negotiated rates of hotel rooms,
rental spaces, and meals at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., on which her
father's inaugural committee spent funds it privately raised (a standard practice for inaugural
committees), WNYC and ProPublica reported in December 2018.[128]
In May 2019, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia requested some documents
about her and her sibling's role in her father's inauguration,[129] although Trump did not have "any
official role in running the committee".[130]
Advisor to the President of the United States
In January 2017, Trump resigned from her position at the Trump Organization.[131] The organization
also removed images of Trump and her father from their websites, in accordance with official
advice on federal ethics rules.[132]

Trump (fourth from right) attending the signing ceremony for the INSPIRE
Women Act on February 28, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House
After advising her father in an unofficial capacity for the first two months of his administration,
Trump was appointed "First Daughter and Advisor to the President,"[133][134] a government employee,
on March 29, 2017.[135][136][n 1] She did not take any salary for the position and didn't receive any
government health benefits during her four years at the White House.[140][141][142] She also became the
head of the newly established Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship.[3][4]
During the early months of her father's administration, some commentators compared her role in
the administration to that of Julie Nixon Eisenhower, daughter of President Richard Nixon. Nixon's
daughter was one of the most vocal defenders of his administration, and Ivanka Trump defended
President Trump and his administration against a myriad of allegations.[143][144] Washington
Post opinion columnist Alyssa Rosenberg wrote, "Both daughters served as important validators
for their fathers."[143]

With Christine Lagarde and Angela Merkel at the W20 Conference Gala
Dinner in Berlin, April 2017
In late April 2017, Trump hired Julie Radford as her chief of staff. Before the end of the month,
Trump and Radford had plans to travel with Dina Powell and Hope Hicks to the first W20 women's
summit. The W20 was organized by the National Council of German Women's Organizations and
the Association of German Women Entrepreneurs[145] as one of the preparatory meetings leading
up to the G20 head-of-state summit in July. At the conference, Trump spoke about women's rights.
The US media reported that when she praised her father as an advocate for women, some people
in the audience hissed and booed in response.[146][147][148] The same month, Trump and then World
Bank President Jim Kim authored an op-ed published in the Financial Times on women's
economic empowerment,[149] highlighting the critical role that women play in the development of
societies and the business case for involving women in the formal economy.[150] In July 2017,
Trump attended the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, with President Trump and the United
States delegation.[151] She launched We-Fi (Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative),[152] a United
States-led billion-dollar World Bank initiative to advance women's entrepreneurship.[153]
Ivanka, Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend the opening of the U.S. Embassy to
Israel in Jerusalem on May 14, 2018.
In August 2017, President Trump announced that Ivanka would lead a U.S. delegation to India in
the fall in global support of women's entrepreneurship.[154][66][155] In September 2017, Trump delivered
an anti-human trafficking speech at the United Nations General Assembly, calling it "the greatest
human rights issue of our time".[156] The event was hosted by British Prime Minister Theresa May,
who personally invited Trump to a patriciate, in collaboration with Great Britain and Ireland.[156]
President Trump, Ivanka and British prime minister Theresa May attend a business roundtable event at St
James's Palace in London, June 4, 2019.
Trump led the United States presidential delegation to the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Winter
Games closing ceremony in February 2018.[157] She dined with South Korean President Moon Jae-
in at his residence, the Blue House.[158]

President Trump, Ivanka and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the G20

Summit in Osaka, June 28, 2019
She and her father attended the 2019 G20 Osaka summit in late June 2019; the French
government released a video of her awkwardly inserting herself into a conversation with world
leaders, leading to online parodies and memes.[159][160]
In June 2019, Trump participated in talks between her father and North Korean leader Kim Jong-
un inside the Korean peninsula's demilitarized zone.[161][162] She described the experience as
"surreal".[161]
Trump went on a worldwide tour in 2019 to promote her "Women's Global Development and
Prosperity Initiative",[163][164] in which she traveled to Ethiopia,[165] Ivory
Coast,[166] Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay,[167] and Morocco,[168] as well as attended the 74th United
Nations General Assembly.[169] In 2021, a Government Accountability Office audit concluded that
Trump's initiative, which spent $265 million a year of taxpayer money on 19 women's
empowerment projects, failed to target the money towards projects that related to women's
empowerment, and did not measure the impact of the spending.[170]
In January 2020, Trump organized a Human Trafficking Summit at the White House where
President Trump signed an executive order expanding his domestic policy office with a new
position solely focused on combating human trafficking.[171][172] In June 2020, Trump hosted an event
at the White House with Attorney General Bill Barr, Special Advisor Heather C. Fischer, non-profit
leaders, and survivors of human trafficking to announce $35 million in grant funding to aid victims
of human trafficking.[173]
Trump was credited with proposing the controversial photo opportunity for President Donald
Trump holding a bible in front of St. John's Church, which required violently clearing peaceful
protesters.[174][175] She walked with her father to the site and carried the bible in her Max
Mara purse.[176]
In July 2020, Trump tweeted a picture of herself with a Goya Foods bean can, endorsing the
product. The owner of Goya Foods had days prior praised President Trump, leading to a backlash
against the company. Trump's tweet raised ethics concerns, given that Trump was at the time an
official adviser in the White House, and employees in public office are not permitted to endorse
products.[177]
In September 2020, Trump joined Attorney General Bill Barr, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, First
Lady Marty Kemp, and Tim Tebow in Atlanta to announce $100 million in grant funding for human
trafficking.[178][179]
While serving in her father's administration, Trump retained ownership of businesses, which drew
criticism from government ethics experts who said it created conflicts of interest.[180] It is not
possible to determine the exact amount of Trump's outside income while working in her father's
administration because she is only required to report the worth of her assets and liabilities in
ranges to the Office of Government Ethics.[180] The incomes of Trump and her husband Jared
Kushner ranged from $36.2 million to $157 million in 2019, at least $29 million in 2018, and at
least $82 million in 2017.[180] In 2019, she earned $3.9 million from her stake in the Trump hotel in
Washington, D.C.[180]