Trump converted to Judaism prior to marrying Jared Kushner, a real estate developer, in 2009. The couple has three children. Prior to her political career, she was an executive vice president of her family-owned Trump Organization and also a boardroom judge on her father’s television show, The Apprentice. She also had a fashion lifestyle brand under her own name that consisted of apparel, footwear, handbags, jewelry, and fragrance. Trump shut down the company in July 2018.
In January 2017, Trump became an unofficial advisor in her father’s first presidential administration alongside her husband. In March that year, she became an official employee in his administration. While serving in the White House, she continued to retain ownership of businesses. This raised ethics concerns, specifically conflicts of interest.
Early life and education
Ivana Marie Trump was born on October 30, 1981,[1][2] in Manhattan, New York City, as the second child of Donald Trump and his first wife, the Czech-American model Ivana (née Zelníčková).[3][4] For most of her life, she has been nicknamed “Ivanka”, a Slavicdiminutive form of her first name Ivana.[5] Trump’s parents divorced in 1990 when she was nine years old.[6] She has two full brothers, Donald Jr. and Eric, a half-sister, Tiffany, and a half-brother, Barron.
After graduating from Wharton, Trump briefly worked for the real estate firm Forest City Ratner.[15] As executive vice president of development and acquisitions of the Trump Organization, she was responsible for the domestic and global expansion of the company’s real estate interests.[16] Trump led the request for proposal (RFP) with the General Services Administration in February 2012, resulting in the final selection of the Trump Organization to develop the historic Old Post Office in Washington, D.C.[17][18] She then oversaw the $200-million conversion of the building into a luxury hotel, which opened in 2016.[19][20] Trump also led the acquisition and redevelopment of the Doral Hotel, a 700-room resort, in Miami.[21]
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.[22]
Trump in July 2007
Trump formed a partnership with Dynamic Diamond Corp. in 2007 to create Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, a line of diamond and gold jewelry sold at her first flagship retail store in Manhattan.[23][24] She later began selling jewelry online through her brand’s website, which was relaunched in August 2010.[25] Her flagship moved from Madison Avenue to 109 Mercer Street, a larger space in the SoHo district, in November 2011.[26][27] Celebrities were spotted wearing her jewelry including Jennifer Lopez on the cover of Glamour[28] and Rihanna on the cover of W magazine.[29] Her brand was named “Launch of the Year” in 2010 by Footwear News.[30] Trump’s industry recognitions include the Breakthrough Award at the Accessories Council Excellence Awards presented by designer Carolina Herrera in 2015.[31] Her collection was covered in magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Forbes Life, Golf Magazine, Town & Country, and Vogue.[32] Trump has been featured prominently in profiles in publications including NY Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Forbes, Fortune, Marie Claire, and Glamour.[33][34][35][36][37][38][39] Members of 100 Women in Hedge Funds selected Trump to their board in December 2012.[40]
Between 2010 and 2018, Trump worked as a paid consultant for The Trump Organization while maintaining a separate status from formal employment.[41][42] She stepped away from these roles upon becoming a senior advisor in the White House.[43][44] In 2012, she was named to the board of 100 Women in Hedge Funds.[40] Her fashion brand, which included apparel and accessories, was sold in various retailers and earned her a Breakthrough Award from the Accessories Council in 2015.[45][46][47][48][49] The brand was later involved in a legal dispute that was settled out of court.[50][51]
Between 2016 and 2017, Trump applied for numerous trademarks in China, with several approved around the time of President Xi Jinping’s 2017 visit to the U.S.[52] A Chinese official stated the applications were processed according to standard procedures, and a trademark lawyer noted the timeline was not unusual.[53][54] That same year, she partnered with the World Bank to support a fund for female entrepreneurs.[55]
In 2018, Trump closed her fashion brand to focus on public policy, following declining sales and increased scrutiny of overseas manufacturing practices.[56][57][58]
After leaving government service, Trump and Kushner partnered with the latter’s firm Affinity Partners on a $1.4 billion redevelopment of Sazan Island in Albania, which locals often refer to as “Trump Island.”[59][60] In 2023, she co-founded Planet Harvest, a company focused on tackling food waste by redirecting surplus produce and creating consumer goods from excess crops.[61][62]
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.[71] She was featured in advertisements for Tommy Hilfiger,[71]Elle,[72] Vogue,[73] Teen Vogue,[74] Harper’s Bazaar,[75] and Thierry Mugler,[76] She also engaged in fashion runway work.[77][76][78][79] In May 1997, she was featured on the cover of Seventeen.[80] Trump has been profiled in many women’s fashion magazines, including Vogue,[32]Glamour,[81]Marie Claire,[82] and Elle.[83] She was featured on covers such as Harper’s Bazaar,[75]Forbes, Forbes Life,[84]Marie Claire, Golf Digest,[85]Town & Country,[86]Elle Décor,[87]Shape,[88] and Stuff magazine.[89] Trump was featured in Vanity Fair‘s annual International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List in 2007 and 2008.[90]
The book was part of Trump’s associated marketing campaign also titled “Women Who Work”.[44] It received mixed reviews from critics.[97][98][99]
Trump campaign and administration
2016 presidential campaign and election
Trump introduced her father at the Trump Tower in 2015 as he announced his candidacy for president of the United States.[100][101] She publicly endorsed his presidential campaign and made public appearances supporting and defending him.[102][103][104] 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.”[105]
In January 2016, Trump praised her father in a radio ad that aired in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.[106][107] She appeared by his side following the results of early voting states in 2016, in particular briefly speaking in South Carolina.[108][109] 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.[110]
Trump introduced her father in a speech immediately before his own speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention (RNC) in July.[111] Trump addressed issues including equal pay for working mothers and the availability of affordable, high-quality child care.[112] 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“.[113] Her speech was well received as portraying Donald Trump “in a warmer-than-usual light”, according to The Washington Post.[114] 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”.[115] Others said that her speech was the “high point of the convention”.[116]
An earlier Post article had questioned whether the policy positions Trump espoused were closer to those of Hillary Clinton than to those of her father.[117]
Trump attended her father’s presidential inauguration and was involved in coordinating some event logistics, including rates for venues and meals at the Trump International Hotel, where the inaugural committee used privately raised funds—a common practice for such events.[118]
Advisor to the President of the United States
In January 2017, Trump resigned from her position at the Trump Organization.[119] The organization also removed images of Trump and her father from their websites, in accordance with official advice on federal ethics rules.[120]
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 “Advisor to the President,”[121][122] a government employee, on March 29, 2017.[123][124][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.[121][128][129] She also became the head of the newly established Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship.[130]
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[131] 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 same month, Trump and then World Bank president Jim Yong Kim authored an op-ed published in the Financial Times on women’s economic empowerment,[132] highlighting the critical role that women play in the development of societies and the business case for involving women in the formal economy.[133]
In July 2017, Trump attended the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, with President Trump and the United States delegation.[134] She launched We-Fi (Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative),[135] a United States-led billion-dollar World Bank initiative to advance women’s entrepreneurship.[136]
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.[137][56][138] 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”.[139] The event was hosted by then British prime minister Theresa May, who personally invited Trump to participate, in collaboration with Great Britain and Ireland.[139]
President Trump, Ivanka and British prime minister Theresa May attend a business roundtable event at St James’s Palace in London, June 4, 2019.
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