Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter who has drawn controversy for her 'unclear' role in the White House
The role of Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter of US President Donald Trump, has rapidly shifted from being a behind-the-scenes adviser to being a White House power player. He also shared the stage with his father at the Republican National Convention.
Ivanka followed her father to Washington while her two brothers, Donald Jr and Eric Trump, took over the family business after the 2016 US election.
The 38-year-old mother of three and her husband, Jared Kushner, played influential roles in the Trump administration's first term.
She was criticized after participating in the discussion circle of German chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF chairman Christine Lagarde at the G20 women-only summit in 2019. She also sat in on meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping during their state visits.
Childhood in the public eye
Ivanka is the son of Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana Trump, a model from the Czech Republic. He was born in New York City in 1981
After her parents divorced when she was 10 years old, Ivanka remained in the public spotlight during her childhood.
She then started her career as a model in 1997, although not for long. She appeared in Seventeen magazine and modeled on the catwalk for brands such as Versace, Marc Bouwer, and Thierry Mugler.
He then attended Georgetown University for two years before moving to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 2004.
Ivanka converted to Judaism after marrying Jared Kushner, the son of a well-known property developer in New York, in 2009.
The couple has three children: Arabella, Joseph and Theodore.
Family business
Trump gave Ivanka authority in her family's business, something her wives never had.
Ivanka skyrocketed to become executive vice president for the development and acquisitions division with her two brothers. He is said to have handled some of the biggest deals ever scored by the Trump Organization.
Ivanka helps expand the Trump Hotel brand network overseas, handles the interior design of the hotels, and oversees the international real estate commission trade, according to Trump's website.
He also launched a fashion line under his name, which several retailers abandoned as part of the Trump brand boycott after the election.
Nonetheless, brand president Ivanka Trump said sales picked up earlier this year amid a boycott.
She has published two books, including The Trump Card, published in 2009, and Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, which is due out this year.
She has also appeared as a judge on her father's television reality show, The Apprentice.
Now he has resigned from his post at the Trump Organization, although he still receives a fixed amount of payments from the real estate company.
The former company executive also handed over control of his fashion line to the president of the company and transferred his assets to a trust to supervise.
However, some ethicists say Ivanka's unclear role in the White House has raised questions about whether she violates conflict of interest rules.
Trusted advisor
Ivanka has increasingly regularly appeared beside her father at high-level meetings with world, political and business leaders.
He was granted rare access to West Wing offices and security clearance before he officially joined Trump's White House as an unpaid special assistant.
Before his father's inauguration, he told CBS that he would not join the Trump administration and would only focus on being his daughter. Yet Ivanka and her husband are now Trump's most visible advisers, both at home and abroad.
Kushner was tasked with mediating peace in the Middle East, reforming the US criminal justice system, and managing the Office for American Innovation, which is tasked with reforming the federal government and the opioid epidemic.
Perhaps his most important task is this year as a member of the coronavirus response team. He was tasked with designing a national test plan and leading a hunt for medical supplies. But testing is now being submitted to each state, and many governors at the start of the pandemic criticized the federal government's efforts to supply PPE to health workers.
Ivanka, who was tasked with winning votes for working women during her father's campaign, has said she wants to focus on issues such as income equality for women and paid parental leave.
She has frequently defended her father who was criticized for his treatment of women, especially after tapes of his vulgar conversations were released during the 2016 US presidential election.
Ivanka has also been criticized for not publicly condemning some of her father's controversial acts.
"If I disagree with my father, he will know," he told CBS's This Morning program. He said he voiced his opinion "quietly and directly and clearly."
Controversial moment
Ivanka's obscure role means that she has performed in unusual places.
In early 2018, he led the US delegation to the closing ceremonies for the Winter Olympics in South Korea.
A few months later, his father said he was thinking of making him the US ambassador to the United Nations, but he refused because he would be accused of nepotism. One year later, he turned down Trump's offer to become head of the World Bank.
One of Ivanka's controversial moments was when she was caught using her personal email account to send hundreds of messages to US officials. In 2016, Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of endangering the US by using a personal email when she was US Secretary of State. This topic became a major campaign issue.
Criticism of Ivanka's arrival at the G20 summit in Osaka grew when the French president uploaded a clip of Ivanka who deliberately entered the conversation circle of world leaders.
Ivanka also became a hot topic when she and her father came under fire for supporting a Hispanic food company on social media. They responded to demands for a boycott of the company, Goya Foods, after its leadership expressed support for Trump.
He and his family traveled from Washington DC to Bedminster, New Jersey, during a lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It goes against federal government guidelines for staying at home. The White House defended the trip, saying it was not a commercial trip.
Shortly before her departure, Ivanka tweeted: "The lucky ones are in a position to stay at home, please, please stay home."
