Meet Ivanka Trump, the Daughter Groomed to Take Over Donald Trump’s Billion-dollar Empire

March 8, 2016

Ivanka Trump is the strikingly beautiful and intelligent second child of GOP presidential aspirant Donald J. Trump and his first wife, Czech Olympian-turned-model and entrepreneur, Ivana Trump.

Ivanka was born in Manhattan on Oct. 30, 1981 with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. While her parents divorced in 1991 when she was just 10 years old, she has fond memories of having very supportive parents growing up. In an interview last year with People, she revealed how her father groomed her to join the family business very early.

“I have notes from when I was 6 years old where he would send me renderings of buildings and he’d say, ‘I can’t wait for you to work for me one day,’” she said.

She considers her mom her “cultural influence” and, in a 2007 interview with Marie Claire, described her as a disciplinarian who would spank her on occasion.

“We knew we were the most important thing to our parents and that real estate is in our blood,” she added.

Trump attended the Chapin School in New York but was later transferred to Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut when she was 15.

“I was all of a sudden in the prison of boarding-school life, and all my friends in New York were having fun,” she said.

As a form of escape, she started modeling for Versace and Thierry Mugler, and at the age of 16, made her first magazine cover appearance on Seventeen.

After spending two years at Georgetown University, she transferred and graduated summa cum laude from her father’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, with a bachelor of science in economics in 2004.

After graduation, Trump worked for real estate company Forest City Enterprises for a year before eventually joining the Trump Organization in 2005.

Aside from being a successful executive vice president of acquisitions and development for her father’s company, Trump has also become an accomplished entrepreneur on her own.

When she and brothers Donald Jr. and Eric founded the Trump Hotel Collections in 2007, she also launched her own jewelry brand, the Ivanka Trump Collection, which has successfully spawned clothing, shoe and accessories lines carried by top fashion stores.

Her popularity skyrocketed in 2006 when she debuted on her father’s television program “The Apprentice,” where she replaced Carolyn Kepcher as a primary boardroom judge.

Due to her newfound fame, she was approached by publishers to write a book. While she said she thought writing a book at 27 years old seemed premature at the time, she eventually published “The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life” in 2009. The business memoir went on to become a bestseller.

“The business-advice books are typically written by 60- or 70-year-old men, reflecting back on their careers,” she told Vogue last year. “So they’re not particularly relatable to a young woman just starting out.”

In October of 2009, she married real estate and publishing scion Jared Kushner, who she met through mutual friends, at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Months before their wedding, Trump converted from Catholicism to Judaism and adopted the name Yael.

“Jared is my best friend for many reasons, largely because I’ve allowed him to see who I truly am and he still loves me,” she told New York Magazine in a 2009 interview. “I don’t feel like I have any defensive walls built up around me.”

The couple now lives in a $16 million penthouse in Trump Park Avenue with their two children, Arabella Rose and Joseph Frederick Kushner.

“From Friday to Saturday we don’t do anything but hang out with one another,” she told Vogue. “We don’t make phone calls.

The couple is currently pregnant with their third child.

Recently, the 34-year-old has taken an active role in her father’s campaign as his most trusted adviser and supporter visiting polling stations and doing intro speeches for him. As the second most popular Trump, Ivanka almost seems to be Donald’s de facto first lady in waiting, even eclipsing his own wife Melania, who has remained in the background during the entire campaign.

Donald has been vocal about his admiration for Ivanka, describing his daughter as smart and beautiful. On several occasions, however, he has used other adjectives that have raised eyebrows. One instance was during a March 2006 appearance on “The View,” when he joked about dating his daughter:

“It would be really disappointing — not really — but it would depend on what’s inside the magazine. I don’t think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”

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