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Business Insider

US Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio has come a long way since graduating from Yale Law School in 2013.
The former venture capitalist-turned-politician’s career trajectory got a big boost on Monday when former US president Donald Trump named him running mate.
“As vice-president, J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our troops, and will do everything he can to help me make America great again,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
Vance does have benefactors, like tech billionaire Peter Thiel. But before Thiel, Vance caught a big break when he was still in law school.
The Marine veteran enrolled at Yale Law School in 2010 after graduating from Ohio State University.
In his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, Vance likened his year at the Ivy League institution to attending a kind of “nerd Hollywood”. Besides earning his law degree, Yale would also be where the seeds of his political career would be sown.

It was at Yale where Vance gained a mentor in the form of his contract law professor, Amy Chua, 61.
Chua, who earned her bachelor’s and law degree from Harvard, pursued a career in corporate law before leaving for academia. She first taught at Duke Law School before joining Yale in 2001.
Chua, who gained notoriety for her 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, encouraged Vance to write Hillbilly Elegy.
“I always thought J.D. was destined for great things, and that going the conventional route would actually slow him down,” Chua said of Vance in a 2017 interview with The Atlantic.
Representatives for Vance and Chua did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Besides reading Vance’s drafts, Chua introduced him to her own literary agent, Tina Bennett. In the “Acknowledgments” section of Hillbilly Elegy, Vance thanked both Bennett and Chua for their support.
“Besides Tina, the person who deserves the most credit for this book’s existence is Amy Chua, my Yale contracts professor, who convinced me that both my life and the conclusions I drew from it were worth putting down on paper,” Vance wrote.
“She has the wisdom of a respected academic and the confident delivery of a Tiger Mother, and there were many times that I needed [and benefited] from both,” he continued.

Chua was also a huge cheerleader for Vance’s book, which she helped to promote.
“When the book first came out, she probably emailed every single television producer and personality in the United States of America,” Vance told The Atlantic in 2017.
“It’s true, I emailed everybody. There were these creepy emails to people like Tom Brokaw, with lots of smiley faces and exclamation points,” Chua said in the same interview.
The efforts ended up paying off, with Hillbilly Elegy becoming a bestseller in 2016. The book has sold at least 1.6 million copies to date, according to market research company Circana, Associated Press reported.
Vance’s public profile was boosted even further after Trump’s victory in 2016’s presidential election.
Some news outlets even started calling Vance the “Trump whisperer” because of the book’s focus on the poverty and social decay that was afflicting America’s rust belt states.
In his memoir, Vance said he had asked Chua to recommend him for a federal judge clerkship. Chua agreed, though she ultimately tried to dissuade him from proceeding with his application.
“I think you’re doing this for the credential, which is fine, but the credential doesn’t actually serve your career goals,” Chua told Vance, who was already in a relationship with his law school classmate Usha Chilukuri, per Vance’s memoir.
“This clerkship is the type of thing that destroys relationships. If you want my advice, I think you should prioritise Usha and figure out a career move that actually suits you,” Chua said.
Vance ended up following Chua’s advice. He married Chilukuri in 2014, a year after graduating from Yale.

“Amy’s advice stopped me from making a life-altering decision. It prevented me from moving a thousand miles away from the person I eventually married,” Vance wrote in his memoir.
“Most important, it allowed me to accept my place at this unfamiliar institution – it was OK to chart my own path and OK to put a girl above some shortsighted ambition. My professor gave me permission to be me,” he added.
That said, a lot has happened after Vance left Yale to start his career.
Vance, who told a former Yale classmate in 2016 that he thought Trump could become “America’s Hitler”, has since metamorphosed into a devout supporter of the former president.
In 2022, Vance was elected as Ohio’s junior senator after securing Trump’s endorsement.
It is not clear how Chua feels about Vance’s abrupt turn toward Trump and the politics now he represents. The celebrity professor came under fire in 2018 after she endorsed Brett Kavanaugh when Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court.
Chua, who continues to teach at Yale, declined to comment on her one-time protege’s embrace of Trumpism in an interview with the Financial Times’ Edward Luce in 2021.
“I never turn on my students,” she said.
Read the original article on Business Insider


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How ‘tiger mum’ Amy Chua helped boost Trump VP pick J.D. Vance to superstardom

Amy Chua, seen in Hong Kong in December 2023, gained notoriety for her 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Photo: May Tse

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance point to the stage during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday. Photo: Reuters

Hillbilly Elegy became a bestseller in 2016 and has sold at least 1.6 million copies to date. Photo: HarperCollins Publishers via AP

Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance arrives with his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday. Photo: AP

Meet Usha Vance, child of Indian immigrants and Trump VP pick J.D. Vance’s lawyer wife

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, kisses his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance as they arrive on the floor during the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, Monday, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Republican US vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance and his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance arrive on the floor during the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday. Photo: AP

J.D. Vance and his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance appear on stage during a primary election night event in Cincinnati, Ohio, in May 2022. Photo: Bloomberg

How his ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ catapulted J.D. Vance to become Trump’s vice-president pick

JD Vance appears with Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday. Photo: AP

Glenn Close (second from left) as “Mawmaw” and Owen Asztalos (right) as “Young J.D. Vance” in “Hillbilly Elegy”. Photo: Lacey Terrell/Netflix

Donald Trump Jnr shares a smile with J.D. Vance at the Republican National Convention on Monday. Photo: Bloomberg

Daughter of ‘tiger mom’ Amy Chua picked as law clerk for US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

Amy Chua gestures as she reads an excerpt from her book during a literature festival in Jaipur, India in 2012. Photo: AFP

FILE - In this Sept. 27, 2018 file photo, then Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. Just 1 in 4 people think Brett Kavanaugh was completely honest during his pivotal testimony last month to the Senate Judiciary Committee. That's according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File, Pool)

Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld. Photo: Twitter

Where would Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance stand on the big China issues?

Former US President Donald Trump (centre), and Senator J.D. Vance (right) are expected to be aligned on Taiwan and trade with China. Photo: Bloomberg

Republican vice-president candidate J.D. Vance (right) is expected to align with Trump on the big China issues. Photo: dpa

Asian-American community angered by erroneous report that Donald Trump shooter was Chinese

A demonstrator holds a sign calling for a stop to hate against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in Seattle, Washington, on March 27, 2021. Photo: AFP

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The author and law professor was Vance’s mentor at Yale, and a huge cheerleader for his eventual bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy


The author and law professor was Vance’s mentor at Yale, and a huge cheerleader for his eventual bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy.
