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10 Things You Never Knew About Ivanka Trump

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She modeled for Seventeen before she ever sat in a boardroom.

Ivanka Trump walked into the White House era carrying a resume most executives twice her age couldn’t match — fashion runways, an Ivy League MBA, a jewelry line, a bestselling book, and a starring role in her father’s campaign. TheThings Celebrity video “10 Things You Never Knew About Ivanka Trump,” released in early 2017 just after Donald Trump’s inauguration, digs into the details that got lost in the headlines. Here’s what the video actually gets right about the president’s eldest daughter.

• Born Ivana Marie Trump on October 30, 1981, she was educated at the Chapin School, Choate Rosemary Hall, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2004.
• She modeled as a teenager, appearing on magazine covers including Seventeen and walking runway shows in the late 1990s, before converting to Orthodox Judaism in 2009 ahead of marrying Jared Kushner.
• She served as Executive Vice President of Development and Acquisitions at The Trump Organization, ran her own fashion and fine-jewelry brand, and authored the 2009 book “The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life.”

From Chapin to the Runway

Long before Ivanka Trump carried a title at her father’s company, she was working the runway. As a teenager she modeled professionally, landing magazine covers including Seventeen and booking runway bookings through the late 1990s while still attending the Chapin School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She later transferred to Choate Rosemary Hall for high school before enrolling at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2004 with the same business degree her father earned decades earlier.

That combination — modeling résumé plus Ivy League finance degree — became her calling card. It’s the kind of dual biography that made her an easy face for magazine profiles throughout the 2000s, long before anyone was talking about her as a West Wing advisor.

A Faith Conversion Before the Wedding

Ivanka was raised Presbyterian, not Jewish, which makes her 2009 conversion to Orthodox Judaism one of the more overlooked chapters of her biography. She converted prior to marrying real estate developer Jared Kushner, and the couple has since kept an observant household — they keep Shabbat and run a kosher kitchen at home.

She converted to Orthodox Judaism in 2009, and the couple has kept Shabbat and a kosher home ever since.

The couple has three children together — Arabella Rose, Joseph Frederick, and Theodore James — all born before the family’s move to Washington. Their upbringing has been shaped by that same observant framework their parents adopted nearly a decade before the White House years began.

The Businesswoman Behind the Brand

Before she became a household name in politics, Ivanka built an actual corporate track record. She held the title of Executive Vice President of Development and Acquisitions at The Trump Organization, overseeing real estate projects alongside her brothers, while separately running her own fashion and fine-jewelry label under her own name.

She also put her business philosophy on paper. In 2009, she published “The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life,” a self-help book aimed at young professionals navigating careers, negotiation, and personal branding — years before her name became synonymous with presidential politics.

The Campaign Trail Confidante

During the 2016 campaign, Ivanka stepped into a role none of her modeling or real estate work had prepared the public for: political surrogate. She introduced her father at the Republican National Convention, delivering a prime-time speech meant to soften his image, and spent the campaign championing family leave and childcare policy proposals that became talking points for the Trump platform.

That work carried straight into the transition. As the extended family relocated to Washington, D.C. — a move that reshaped the social landscape covered everywhere from cable news to late-night sketch shows — Ivanka emerged as one of her father’s closest confidantes, a status that put her policy interests, not just her family ties, under constant scrutiny.

She wasn’t the only Trump woman adjusting to a very different kind of spotlight that winter; Melania Trump’s own transition into the role of First Lady was drawing its own wave of coverage at the same time, with the two women’s public images often compared side by side in that first year.