Ivanka Trump

Ivanka Trump (born October 30, 1981, New York, New York, U.S.) is an American businesswoman and entrepreneur who was an executive vice president in the Trump Organization, her family’s global real-estate company. She was an adviser to her father, Donald Trump, when he served as U.S. president (2017–21).

Ivanka Trump grew up amid great wealth. Her father was the scion of a real-estate empire, and her Czech-born mother, Ivana, was a former model; the couple divorced in 1992. Ivanka Trump had two biological siblings, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump, and later a half sister, Tiffany Trump, and half brother, Barron Trump. As a teenager, Ivanka Trump occasionally modeled, and she notably appeared on the cover of Seventeen magazine in May 1997. That year she cohosted the Miss Teen USA pageant on live television. However, her focus eventually shifted to business, and in 2004 she graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trump subsequently worked at the real-estate company Forest City Ratner, where she was a project manager in the firm’s retail development department. In 2005 she left to join the Trump Organization. The international company had numerous holdings, including hotels, golf resorts, casinos, and residential buildings. She became an executive vice president, specializing in development and acquisition. She was notably involved in the 2013 lease deal that allowed the organization to convert the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C., into a mixed-use property that included a hotel. During this time she met Jared Kushner, whose family also owned a real-estate company. The couple married in 2009, after she converted to Judaism. They later had three children.

In addition to the Trump Organization, Ivanka Trump was involved in other ventures. From 2006 to 2015 she appeared on the reality TV show The Apprentice, which starred her father. In 2007 she debuted an eponymous line that eventually included jewelry, shoes, and clothing. She also wrote the self-help books The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life (2009) and Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success (2017).

In 2015 her father, a Republican, announced that he was running for president. Ivanka Trump was active in his campaign, and, according to reports, he considered naming her as his running mate. However, he ultimately chose Mike Pence. After Donald Trump won the election and took office, she left the Trump Organization to work in the White House. Despite an anti-nepotism law, she was named adviser to the president, and she became director of the Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship. Amid ethics concerns, she closed her fashion line in 2018. Her husband also took an active role in the Trump administration.

Ivanka Trump was widely regarded as a close confidante of her father, and some believed that she was a stabilizing presence in an administration that was often considered chaotic. Her duties were wide-ranging and covered numerous issues. However, she was particularly focused on women’s economic empowerment and working families. In 2019 she launched the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, which sought to help women “realize their economic potential.” She assumed a major role in her father’s reelection bid, but he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. In the ensuing weeks, President Trump alleged voter fraud despite no evidence to support the claim. On January 6, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was stormed by Trump supporters as Congress was in the process of certifying Biden’s win. During the attack, Ivanka Trump reportedly urged her father to intervene to end the violence. Biden was ultimately certified as the winner, and the Trumps left office later in January.

In 2022 Ivanka Trump testified before a congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack. She notably stated that she had “accepted” that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. This admission drew a rebuke from her father. Later in 2022 she testified in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s investigation into the Trump Organization’s business practices; the inquiry, which had begun in 2019, was especially focused on allegations that the company had misstated the value of its properties. In September 2022 James filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and various other family members, alleging “persistent and repeated business fraud.” She stated that the probe had uncovered hundreds of false asset valuations. If the lawsuit is successful, Ivanka Trump would be barred from ever serving as an officer or director of a business in New York state. James also announced that she was making criminal referrals to the Internal Revenue Service and to federal prosecutors.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe