Ivanka Trump

Ivanka Trump began doing real estate work for a Brooklyn developer at the age of 22, learning the trade by working with construction crews.⁠[1][1]

In 2004, she graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.⁠[2]

In 2014, she founded an eponymous clothing brand that grew to 11 product lines sold in department stores such as Nordstrom and Macy’s; that same year she was named to Fortune magazine’s “40 Under 40” list.⁠[3][4][2]

In 2015, the World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader.⁠[2]

On July 21, 2016, at the age of 34, she took the stage at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, speaking before Donald Trump’s nomination acceptance speech; she praised Trump and addressed equal pay and family issues in an effort to win over women voters. Republican delegates praised the speech, and Chris Herrod, Ted Cruz’s campaign director in Utah, said she was showing “the softer side” of Trump.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5][5]

In January 2017, she announced that she would resign from management and operational roles at the Trump Organization and her eponymous fashion brand, and from all officer and direct positions at both companies, a move seen as an effort to comply with ethics laws.⁠[6]

On March 29, 2017, the White House announced that she would serve as an assistant to the president as an unpaid federal employee, with an office in the West Wing. Amid ethical concerns about a member of the president’s family advising him in a personal capacity, she said she would instead serve as an unpaid employee in the White House Office, subject to the same rules as other federal employees, and would file financial disclosures.⁠[7][7][7][7]

As an adviser to the president, she focused on the education and economic empowerment of women and their families, as well as job creation and economic growth through workforce development, skills training, and entrepreneurship. That same year she was named to Time’s 100 Most Influential list and Forbes’ “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.”⁠[2][2]

On July 24, 2018, her company announced that it was shutting down the Ivanka Trump clothing brand so that she could focus on her White House work. She said: “After 17 months in Washington, I do not know when or if I will ever return to the business.” The brand’s sales had soared during the 2016 campaign, but it also faced the #GrabYourWallet boycott campaign, and the retailer Hudson’s Bay announced it would phase out its goods, citing weak sales. In the week before the closure, she heavily promoted a new White House push to get American businesses to hire American workers.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

In February 2019, the U.S. government launched the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative (W-GDP), which aimed to benefit 50 million women in developing countries by 2025 and was financed by a $50 million fund within the U.S. Agency for International Development. In April of that year, she traveled to Ethiopia to promote the initiative, touring a female-run textile facility in Addis Ababa; the trip also included attending a World Bank policy summit and a subsequent visit to Ivory Coast. She said: “investing in women is a smart development policy and it’s smart business.”⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8][8]

On June 30, 2019, after the G20 summit in Japan, she accompanied Donald Trump as an adviser to the president to the Korean Demilitarized Zone, joining his talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inside a building straddling the line between the two Koreas. Asked how North Korea was, she replied: “Surreal.”⁠[9][9][9]

On December 17, 2019, the U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which included a provision granting federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave. Paid leave and child care had been a focus of her work for two years, and she met with more than 60 lawmakers from both parties to push for it. She said in a statement: “After three years of relentless advocacy, the passage of the NDAA will secure Paid Parental Leave for all federal employees.”⁠[10][10][10][10]

On January 31, 2020, Trump signed an executive order to combat human trafficking and online child exploitation, creating a dedicated position within the White House Domestic Policy Council. The administration’s efforts in this area were spearheaded in large part by Ivanka Trump, who had delivered a speech on combating human trafficking at the United Nations in September 2017 and held listening sessions with survivors and advocates at the White House.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11]

On June 9, 2022, the U.S. House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol played her video deposition at its first public hearing. She said she did not believe Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election had been “stolen” through fraud and accepted the conclusion of then Attorney General Bill Barr, who had repeatedly explained to Trump that he had lost the election and that the Justice Department had found no significant fraud to support his claims. She said in her deposition: “I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying.”⁠[12][12][12][12][12]

In July 2024, she said on Lex Fridman’s podcast that she was developing a 1,400-acre island in the Mediterranean and bringing in the best architects and brands. The island is Sazan, off the coast of Albania, which was being developed into an ultra-luxury tourism destination as a new project in her and Jared Kushner’s real estate portfolio.⁠[13][13][13][13]

On May 31, 2026, David Senra’s podcast released an interview with her. On the show she discussed returning to entrepreneurship after leaving Washington: she co-founded Planet Harvest, creating a market for American fruits and vegetables discarded each year because they do not meet cosmetic specifications; she invests in founders in AI, biotech, robotics, and space; and she is working with Elad Gil on the Alexandria AI project, which plans to translate great public-domain literature into every major language and give it away for free. She described herself as now driven by mission rather than achievement.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

Before Donald Trump was elected president, she oversaw development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization with the title of executive vice president, development and acquisitions, leading some of the company’s largest and most complex transactions. She also took part in plans to expand the Trump Hotel Collection from 12 hotels to 30 by 2020.⁠[2][2][4][4]

She led a $200 million deal with the U.S. federal government to redevelop the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C.; Kevin Terry, who led the government’s negotiations, said: “In every aspect of the deal, Ivanka was the lead.” The 1890s building was later converted into an urban hotel.⁠[4][4][1]

She is the author of two books that appeared on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/IvankaTrump (opens in a new window)⁠[2]