As I began to think deeply about my identity, I fell hard for a classmate of mine named Usha’ JD Vance, Ohio Senator and Trump’s pick for Vice President reminisced about his Indian-origin wife.
The intercultural marriage of US Senator
Born on August 2, 1984 James David Vance was the surprise pick as the running mate for by Donald Trump. The American politician, lawyer, author, and Marine veteran has served since 2023 as the junior United States senator from Ohio. Republican candidate for vice president in the 2024 United States presidential election.
It is not that Trump and Vance has always been in paradise but at the end of the day the comfort level between the two won the day.
Trump’s running mate has an Indian-Origin mate in real life! James David Vance met his wife Usha Chilukuri at Yale Law School in the year of 2010 while discussing over a group project named social decline in white America.
In 2014, they finally got married in Kentucky after dating for four years by both Hindu and Catholic customs and rituals in the presence of their families.
Who is Usha Chilukuri?
Daughter of Indian immigrants, Usha Chilukuri Vance hails from a distinguished family of academicians in Vishakhapatnam.
The San Francisco Litigator’s parents Chilikuri Radhakrishna and Lakshmi moved to USA in 1980. Usha was raised in Sandiago suburbs. Usha’s grandfather and father have studied from the prestigious IIT.
Her father currently teaching engineering and her mother takes classes on molecular biology.
Her younger sister is a mechanical engineer with a semiconductor company in San Diego and an aunt a medical professional in the southern Indian city of Chennai.
Ms. Chilikuri has a great-aunt in southern India, aged 96, celebrated in local media as the country's oldest active professor.
The Indian-origin wife of Trump’s pick for Vice President had graduated in BA in History from Yale University 2008 and went on to pursue MPhil from University of Cambridge as Gates Cambridge Scholar in 2009.
According to The New York Times, during their wedding in Kentucky in 2014, the pair was blessed by a Hindu Pundit in a separate ceremony.
The Chilikuri family is known to uphold the Hindu ideology despite residing in USA for the longest time.
Foreign is not foreign to Indians
USA has always been inviting to Indians. It is noteworthy that Indian Americans hold over 60 notable positions in the federal government in 2013 and increasing to more than 150 by 2023.
The political radar is surely topped by Kamala Harris, the Indian Vice President of USA. She was the nation’s first Indian American senator and California’s first female and South Asian attorney general. Harris is the first woman to become vice president, as well as the first Black or Asian American person to hold the office.
The corporate world has always been open to super intelligent brains from India. Sundar Pichai is currently the CEO of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary company Google. He studied material engineering. Pichai joined Google in 2004, where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome and ChromeOS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive.
Another Indian-American Corporate Stalwart, Satya Narayana Nadella was born 19 August 1967. He is the executive chairman and CEO of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014 as CEO and John W. Thompson in 2021 as chairman. Before becoming CEO, he was the executive vice president of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company's computing platforms.
One of the top CEOs of the world is an Indian-American, Indra Nooyi Krishnamurthy who was was the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2018. Born on October 28, 1955, Nooyi has been consistently ranked among the world's 100 most powerful women. In 2014, she was ranked at number 13 on the Forbes list, and the second most powerful woman on the Fortune list in 2015 and 2017. She sits on the boards of Amazon and the International Cricket Council, among other organizations.
Editor’s Note
The US Senator is thankful to his Hindu wife, Usha for turning him spiritual from an atheist individual. Both James Vance and Usha Chilikuri are conscious of their individualistic upbringing and they both revere each other’s community in equal measure. So much so they had two separate wedding, a Christian and a Hindu. A progressive family will always lead a reformist nation.
