Ivanka Trump

Ivana Marie Trump was born on October 30, 1981, in Manhattan, New York City, as the second child of Donald Trump and his first wife, the Czech-American model Ivana (née Zelníčková). For most of her life, she has been nicknamed "Ivanka", a Slavic diminutive form of her first name Ivana. Trump's parents divorced in 1990 when she was nine years old. She has two full 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 switching to Choate Rosemary Hall at age 15 in Wallingford, Connecticut. While 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. In May 1997, she was featured on the cover of Seventeen as well as in campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger, Thierry Mugler, and Versace.

After graduating from Choate in 2000, 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.

Business

After graduating from Wharton, Trump briefly worked for the real estate firm Forest City Ratner. 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. 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. She then oversaw the $200-million conversion of the building into a luxury hotel, which opened in 2016. Trump also led the acquisition and redevelopment of the Doral Hotel, a 700-room resort, in Miami.

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.

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. She later began selling jewelry online through her brand’s website, which was relaunched in August 2010. Her flagship moved from Madison Avenue to 109 Mercer Street, a larger space in the SoHo district, in November 2011. Celebrities were spotted wearing her jewelry including Jennifer Lopez on the cover of Glamour and Rihanna on the cover of W magazine. Her brand was named "Launch of the Year" in 2010 by Footwear News. Trump's industry recognitions include the Breakthrough Award at the Accessories Council Excellence Awards presented by designer Carolina Herrera in 2015. Her collection was covered in magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Forbes Life, Golf Magazine, Town & Country, and Vogue. Trump has been featured prominently in profiles in publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Forbes, Fortune, Marie Claire, and Glamour. Members of 100 Women in Hedge Funds selected Trump to serve on their board in December 2012.

Between 2010 and 2018, Trump worked as a paid consultant for The Trump Organization while maintaining a separate status from formal employment. She stepped away from these roles upon becoming a senior advisor in the White House. In 2012, she was named to the board of 100 Women in Hedge Funds. 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. The brand was later involved in a legal dispute that was settled out of court.

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. A Chinese official stated the applications were processed according to standard procedures, and a trademark lawyer noted the timeline was not unusual. That same year, she partnered with the World Bank to support a fund for female entrepreneurs.

In 2018, Trump closed her fashion brand to focus on public policy, following declining sales and increased scrutiny of overseas manufacturing practices.

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."

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.

Trump has a close relationship with her father, who has publicly expressed his admiration for her on several occasions. Ivanka has likewise praised her father, complimenting his leadership skills and saying he empowers other people. Sarah Ellison, writing for Vanity Fair in 2018, noted that "everyone in the family seems to acknowledge" that Ivanka is her father's "favorite" child. This had been confirmed by the family members themselves in a 2015 interview with Barbara Walters on network television where the siblings were gathered and acknowledged this. According to her late mother, Ivanka speaks French and understands Czech.

In January 2017 it was announced that she and Kushner had made arrangements to establish a family home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The couple had previously shared an apartment on Park Avenue in New York City, which Trump chose due to its proximity to her work with the Trump Organization. The residence was featured in Elle Decor in 2012 with Kelly Behun as its interior decorator. Since leaving Washington in 2021, Ivanka and her husband have been residents of Surfside, Florida.

Trump began practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu under the Valente brothers alongside her husband and children. She enjoys golf, surfing, and horseback riding, and has learned to play both the piano and guitar.

In 2010, Trump cofounded Girl Up with the United Nations Foundation. In 2014, Trump launched IvankaTrump.com and the Women Who Work campaign which focused on young, modern professional women, aiming to provide a comprehensive lifestyle guide.

Trump also has ties to a number of Jewish charities, including Chai Lifeline, a charity which helps to look after children with cancer. Other charities she supports include United Hatzalah, to which her father, Donald Trump, has reportedly made six-figure donations in the past. After she was appointed advisor to the president, Trump donated the unpaid half of the advance payments for her book Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success to the National Urban League and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

In 2021 and 2022, Trump partnered with Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya to launch a privately funded holiday food box program that delivered millions of meals nationwide.

Trump collaborated with the nonprofit organizations CityServe, City of Destiny, and Mercy Chefs to supply a million meals to Ukrainian families in March 2022. In December that year, she purchased generators for CityServe's partner churches in Ukraine that were without power. That same year, alongside healthcare industry leaders, she organized five cargo planes of requested medical supplies for Ukraine with the support of the first lady of Poland and the Polish ambassador to the UN.

In 2007, Trump donated $1,000 to the presidential campaign of then-Senator Hillary Clinton. In 2012, she endorsed Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. In 2013, Trump and her husband hosted a fundraiser for the Democratic politician Cory Booker, and the couple bundled more than $40,000 for Booker's U.S. Senate campaign.

During her father's presidency, Trump transformed from a liberal to an "unapologetically" pro-life, "proud Trump Republican". At the 2016 Republican National Convention, she said of her political views: "Like many of my fellow millennials, I do not consider myself categorically Republican or Democrat." In 2018, Trump changed her New York voter registration from Democratic to Republican.