Ivanka: The deal-maker daughter who is Donald Trump's trusted political adviser
The executive vice president at Trump Organisation who is equal parts fashionista and doting mother, has helped shaped Trump’s campaign messaging and tax plan
Headstrong as a little girl, Ivanka Trump is now a trusted political adviser to her father Donald Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and a willowy walking advertisement for her own line of jewellery, clothing, shoes and more, as well as a power player in the Trump real estate empire.
She’s the rare executive vice president whose skill set includes an ability to walk the job on a construction site in stiletto heels.
Her father, by contrast, is the very definition of drama – in his presidential campaign, with his three marriages and in his brash approach to life.
Ivanka Trump’s speech is as measured as her father’s is unrestrained. Her Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest accounts project an oh-so-curated image that is equal parts fashionista, doting mother, corporate deal-maker and cheerleader for her hashtagged cause, #WomenWhoWork.
Sometimes she achieves harmonic convergence.
For example, her back-to-school photo on IvankaTrump.com documenting the contents of daughter Arabella’s preschool backpack. It included the 4-year-old’s “favourite Ivanka Trump sandals”.
As for politics, Trump, 33, plays down her influence in her father’s quest for the White House.
But Donald Trump volunteers Ivanka’s name when asked whose advice he values. It was Ivanka who introduced her father when he announced his campaign for president. It was Ivanka who huddled with him during the breaks when the Republican debates heated up.
“She’s got great sensibility,” he says, with obvious admiration.
In one debate, he even suggested her for a place on the US$10 bill (with civil rights leader Rosa Parks as an alternative). And, years ago, there was the time when he complimented her figure and joked that if she “weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her”.
Ivanka Trump declined to be interviewed and her father’s campaign declined to define what she’s doing for the campaign. But a person familiar with their interactions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because discussion of internal conversations was not authorised, says Ivanka has helped with campaign messaging and helped develop her father’s tax plan.
When he was criticised for making derogatory remarks about women, he pushed back with a testimonial of sorts from Ivanka and his current wife, Melania. Both, he says, have attested to his “great respect for women”.
Trump the candidate has promised that both women will be “out very much on the campaign trail”. But his wife, a former model, appears content to let Ivanka take the lead.
It’s a role Ivanka, who was a regular boardroom judge on T he Apprentice reality TV show, is comfortable with – in business if not in politics.
As a college student, she already was looking past modelling gigs to bigger things. She liked to scan the New York skyline and imagine which “patch of sky maybe one of my buildings will be in”.
She laid out those aspirations in Born Rich, a 2003 documentary that a fabulously wealthy classmate made about his fabulously wealthy friends. While some of the others were conflicted about their lives of wealth and privilege, Trump had got over any angst about life in her famous family's shadow.
“It’s not a bad shadow to be under,” she said.
As for her dream of altering skylines, it’s now her reality as the Trump Organisation’s executive vice president for development and acquisitions. Deals in Rio de Janeiro and Vancouver are in the pipeline. She helped land the Doral Resort & Spa deal in Florida while nine months pregnant with Arabella. Now five months pregnant with her third child, she was in Washington last week checking on redevelopment of the Old Post Office Pavilion as a Trump hotel.
