Who Is Ivanka Trump? Facts And Everything You Need To Know About America's New First Daughter

When Donald Trump becomes the country's 45th president, his daughter, Ivanka, is set to campaign for the rights of working women. There's one problem: she comes from a world lightyears away from that of the average female worker.

“In business, as in life, nothing is ever handed to you. That might sound like a line coming from someone with a backstory like mine,” Ivanka Maria Trump wrote at the start of her 2009 book, “The Trump Card,” in an introduction titled “GET OVER IT.”

She continued: “Yes, I’ve had the great good fortune to be born into a life of wealth and privilege, with a name to match. Yes, I’ve had every opportunity, every advantage. And yes, I’ve chosen to build my career on a foundation built by my father and grandfather, so I can certainly see why an outsider might dismiss my success in our family business as yet another example of nepotism.”

The Ivy League graduate, former model and converted Orthodox Jew has faced such accusations lately, as she appears poised to take a position in her president-elect father’s administration.

While her brothers Donald Jr. and Eric will remain leaders of the Trump Organization, Ivanka will be heading south to Washington with her family. (Her husband, Jared Kushner, will be working as a senior adviser to her father.)

Ivanka, 35, will be leaving more than just her clothing line upon moving from her stylish apartment in New York’s Upper East Side. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004 and briefly working for the Cleveland-based real estate firm Forest City Ratner, she began working at the Trump Organization in 2005. Her father has already announced he would be stepping down from his position as chairman and president, and she will leave the post of executive vice president of development and acquisition. She has held the position along with her brothers Eric, who joined in 2006, and Donald Jr., who joined in 2001, since she started working at Trump Organization, while in her early twenties.

She’s branched out since then with her own fashion line, which, like the Donald of late, has been far from immune to controversy. Her namesake clothing brand has been accused of stealing designs, recalled scarves deemed too flammable by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and faced widely-publicized accusations from the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, more commonly known as PETA, of selling hats with fur from inhumanely-killed rabbits.

Her brand received further negative publicity when an ABC analysis found that, contrary to the president-elect’s frequent criticism of the practice of outsourcing, most of her clothing and accessory line had been manufactured in China.

But much of her recent work, in business and politics, has centered on a “Lean In”-type feminism. She was set to release her new book “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules of Success” in March. It was based on the titular campaign she launched in November 2014, which was created with the intent of “emboldening and encouraging women to live the lives that they want to live” and with an eye on “power dressing,” Trump told Vogue that year.

She’s made working women’s issues her priority on the campaign trail, and told CBS less than a week after her father’s victory that she was “very passionate” about pay equality, child care, education and “promoting opportunities for women.”

But during the presidential campaign, a former brand employee spurred criticism when she wrote in a Facebook post that Ivanka and her father didn’t offer maternity leave until the #WomenWhoWork team “fought long and hard to get her to finally agree to eight weeks paid paternity leave.” Trump, the brand’s former creative director said, told her upon her hiring that the young entrepreneur “would have to think about” whether the brand would give the new employee maternity leave, and that Trump herself “went right back to work just a week after having her first child.” (A spokesperson for Ivanka's brand called the claim a “mischaracterization of how our company developed its industry leading culture and benefits package.”)

The former employee said she felt compelled to write the post after seeing an ad for the incoming president's maternity leave policy proposals, the details of which he attributed to Ivanka. His plan included child care tax deductions and guaranteed six weeks of paid maternity leave. Still, it did not feature coverage for same-sex male couples, nor did it include general paternity leave, something advocates say helps balance the work of child rearing between opposite-sex couples.

When a Cosmopolitan reporter brought this up in an interview, she dodged the question. She also revealed her staunch loyalty to her father, when the interviewer brought up a 2004 statement from Donald Trump, in which he called pregnancy “an inconvenience” for business.

“So I think that you have a lot of negativity in these questions, and I think my father has put forth a very comprehensive and really revolutionary plan to help deal with a lot of issues,” she said. “So I don’t know how useful it is to spend too much time with you on this if you’re going to make a comment like that.”

With her vocal support of her father throughout his road to the White House—compared to the relatively reclusive Melania Trump—many have wondered what her role will be after Inauguration Day.

In an ABC interview Thursday, Trump called speculation that she would serve as first lady while her step mother stays in New York for the end of 10-year-old Barron Trump’s school year “inappropriate.”

“I’m emotional,” she told the broadcaster. “My father will be president and hopefully, I can be there to support him and to support those causes I’ve cared about my whole professional career.”