Indian-origin US Second Lady Usha Vance has been chosen to lead the presidential delegation to the 2025 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Italy, as announced by President Donald Trump’s office. The prestigious event will take place in Turin, with the opening ceremony scheduled for March 7.
According to the White House statement, the official delegation will comprise key officials, including Shawn Crowley, the US Chargé d’Affaires to Italy and San Marino, Trent Michael Morse, Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel, Riley Barnes from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and Douglass Benning, Consul General at the US Consulate in Milan.
Usha Vance, a Yale-educated lawyer, has been married to Vice President JD Vance since 2014. She was present at Trump’s recent address to Congress, where she sat beside former volleyball player Payton McNabb. Reports suggest that the First Lady was disappointed that Trump’s executive order regarding transgender athletes in women’s sports was not formally passed into law by the Senate.
Born in San Diego in 1986 to Indian immigrant parents from Andhra Pradesh, Usha Vance grew up in a well-established household. She excelled academically and now works as a corporate litigator in San Francisco. Before pursuing law, she engaged in intensive extracurricular activities at Yale and later studied at Cambridge University as a Gates fellow. She met JD Vance at Yale Law School, and the couple tied the knot in Kentucky in 2014. Their marriage was also blessed in a separate Hindu ceremony. They have three children: Ewan, 6, Vivek, 4, and Mirabel, 2.
Trump has often praised JD Vance, particularly for his successful Senate campaign in Ohio. He remarked that JD was an outstanding senator but jokingly suggested that his wife was even more brilliant. “I would have picked her, but the line of succession doesn’t work that way,” Trump quipped.
With her leadership at the Special Olympics delegation, Usha Vance further cements her influence in American politics, reflecting both her legal acumen and her cultural heritage.
