About VP Vance
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James David Vance (born James Donald Bowman; August 2, 1984) is an American politician, author, attorney, and Marine Corps veteran, the 50th vice president of the United States serving under President Donald Trump. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate from 2023 to 2025.
Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio. After high school, Vance joined the Marine Corps, where he served as a military journalist from 2003 to 2007, and was deployed to the Iraq War for six months in 2005. He graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor's degree in 2009 and Yale Law School with a law degree in 2013. He practiced briefly as a corporate lawyer before embarking on a career in the tech industry as a venture capitalist. His memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, was published in 2016 and adapted into a film in 2020.
Vance won the 2022 United States Senate election in Ohio, defeating Democratic nominee Tim Ryan. After initially opposing Donald Trump's candidacy in the 2016 election, Vance became a strong Trump supporter during Trump's first presidency. In July 2024, Trump selected Vance as his running mate before the Republican National Convention. He served as Ohio's senator until his resignation in preparation to assume the vice presidency in January 2025. Vance is the third-youngest vice president in U.S. history, as well as the first millennial to hold the office.
Vance has been characterized as a national conservative and right-wing populist, and he describes himself as a member of the postliberal right. His political positions include opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control. Vance is an outspoken critic of childlessness and has credited the influence of Catholic theology on his sociopolitical positions.
About VP Vance
After graduating from law school, Vance worked for Republican senator John Cornyn. He spent a year as a law clerk for Judge David Bunning of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, then worked at the law firm Sidley Austin, beginning a brief career as a corporate lawyer. Having practiced law for slightly under two years, Vance moved to San Francisco to work in the technology industry as a venture capitalist. Between 2016 and 2017, he served as a principal at Peter Thiel's firm, Mithril Capital.
In June 2016, Harper published Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. The memoir recounts the Appalachian culture and socioeconomic problems of Vance's small-town upbringing. Hillbilly Elegy was on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2016 and 2017. The Times listed it among "6 Books to Help Understand Trump's Win", and Vance was profiled in The Washington Post, which called him "the voice of the Rust Belt". In The New Republic, Sarah Jones criticized Vance as "liberal media's favorite white trash–splainer" and a "false prophet of blue America", calling the book "little more than a list of myths about welfare queens". Hillbilly Elegy's success helped propel Vance into contact with social elites, and he began writing a column for The New York Times. Vance later said that his interactions with social elites from this time, particularly their perceived disdain for "the people he grew up with", helped shape his later views.
In 2017, Vance joined Revolution LLC, an investment firm founded by Steve Case. Vance was tasked with expanding the "Rise of the Rest" initiative, which focuses on growing investments in underserved regions outside Silicon Valley and New York City.
Vance was a CNN contributor in 2017 and 2018. In April 2017, Ron Howard signed on to direct the film version of Hillbilly Elegy, which was released in select theaters on November 11, 2020. It was released on Netflix for streaming.
In 2019, Vance served on the board of advisors of the With Honor Fund, a Super PAC that helps veterans run for office. From 2020 to 2023, he served on the board of advisors of American Moment, a networking and training organization for young conservatives that is affiliated with Project 2025.
In 2019, Vance and Chris Buskirk co-founded the conservative political advocacy group Rockbridge Network. That year, he also co-founded venture capital firm Narya Capital in Cincinnati with financial backing from Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen. During 2020, he raised $93 million for the firm. With Peter Thiel and former Trump adviser Darren Blanton, Vance invested in Rumble, a Canadian online video platform popular with the political right.
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