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It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. She was extraordinary. My mother taught me a lot about just bringing attention to what you do, bringing and being the child of accomplished parents. Most people thought that I would lack ambition, the preparedness.
But my mother taught me that being underestimated is not a bad thing. It's a very powerful thing, actually. And it almost always worked to the detriment of the person who underestimated me. From a real estate to her own multi-million dollar fashion line, Ivanka Trump continues to carve her own path into the business world, succeeding at every turn.
And then you learn two weeks before he announces. Your father decides he wants to be president of the United States. Did you have any sense that this was at all on the horizon? Not really.
And then when he pulled the trigger, it was full steam. But most people wouldn't give up an $800 million in your business to go into governance. Why did you? He asked us for help.
And he's like, but I have to warn you, we're gonna comment too hard. Probably gonna hate you. But one of the things I've learned in moments of tremendous pressure and scrutiny where any slip-up is completely weaponized against you is to find a signal in the noise. I just don't get distracted by the outside noise.
That's probably the thing that has been most helpful to me in terms of performance and success, because you have a choice only in how you respond. You've said politics is a pretty dark world. This is quite a difficult question to ask, but when you heard the news, there was an assassination attempt on your father's life. Do you remember where you were?
And what's that like as a daughter? Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on the show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know.
And a simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also, it's the simple, easy free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the actual thing to this one right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much.
You don't do many interviews, do you? Not really, no. Why don't you do much media stuff or podcasting or interviews? I actually don't know.
I think I'm, I get sort of really locked in and heads down on what I'm working on that I tend to kind of put on blinders and just go. But I like to have conversations in longer form with people that I admire. I think the reason why I do this is because I see, I naturally see everybody as like a jigsaw puzzle and you've lived an extraordinary life. You've lived an extraordinary, atypical life that, I mean, it's safe to say, almost nobody on planet has ever experienced.
And so I think I ask that question to be connected at the top because the life you've lived that we'll get into is one that would have shaped you in a number of ways. And one of them is, I think from what I read things that you had said and different experiences you had as a child is just like trusting people. You know what's interesting? I grew up, the child of wealthy and accomplished parents.
And so I do think there's like a, a natural barrier that goes up. You're worried about people, especially when you're a kid, liking you for the wrong reasons I see this now with my son. You know, he wants to be loved by his friends. And I appreciate that, that's good for who he is, not for who we are and certainly not for what we have.
So I do think being the child of famous parents and living such a privileged life, I had this guard. And that guard served me really well for a long time. Like I didn't have any friends despite the really tumultuous life that I've had, ups and downs who really disappointed me. I mean, close, close friends who didn't show up for me or who changed because my circumstances are what was happening around me.
And I've learned for me, I mean, you were saying the purpose of life for me, it's the expansion and not contraction of the heart. And that's hard as you get older. You know, how do you live a life of service and rooted in love and connection? And I've learned more and more that those walls, they don't serve you.
And the only way to have connection, which is so fundamental to the human experience is to build it and that requires trust. So I have to trust people. Now I have a good radar, I'm not foolish. I think I'm a very good read of people.
And I think it's one of my strengths. And I think it's why I haven't been surprised by a lot of people. So I read pretty quickly. But I also have had to teach myself rather than grow sort of cynical as one tends to as they get older, I've really actually taught myself to be more trusting.
And to the extent that means periodically, I'll be burned, like that's, I'm okay with that trade off because I think it will lead to more meaningful connections in my life. Probably that's not better, right? I have this photo here of a very small Ivanka. So funny, I look at this and I see my daughter.
Really? That was like the first thing when I saw that photo. At what age did you realize that life for you was slightly different from the average person. Like when does a child realize that?
I think there was always a lot of media attention and scrutiny. You see it, you experience it very early on. I think my parents did a really good job trying to shell dress from it. And it was different than without social media.
You know, not everyone. I think the experience our children have where anywhere they go, people have a recording device in their hands, their iPhone, and can take pictures of them. And you know, it's so exposed during your formative years. And thankfully, I did not have that growing up.
There were times I felt it. And I remember I wanted to be a dancer, a ballet dancer. And you know, my mom was an incredible skier. She skied on the national team for then Czechoslovakia and now Czech Republic.
And so she really believed in the importance of sport for cultivating discipline. And so she really encouraged this. And I was dancing at Juilliard, the School of American Ballet here in New York. I was in the Nutcracker.
And I remember I was probably eight. And I was, you know, like some small role in the Nutcracker. I was a party girl and an angel. Those were like the entry roles where you like dance at the party where the man with the Nutcracker arrives.
And then you're in that angel scene. And I remember being so excited. And it was my first Nutcracker. And Michael Jackson had just moved into Trump Tower and was literally our neighbor in Trump Tower.
And my father sees him one day, you know, passing in the lobby on with him. I said, you know, my daughter's in Nutcracker. You should come. You should come see her performance.
So he comes to the Nutcracker with my father at the height of his fame to watch me dance. And now this in retrospect could be like, wow, what a cool experience. But I was horrified. I'm like, this is, I was so embarrassed.
I thought we had ruined the Nutcracker. Everyone was dancing with one glove. People who produced the show were, you know, hysterical that everyone was dancing with one glove. I thought it was all my fault.
And this was like just a wild childhood experience. I had things like that happen that were so far from normal, that it's actually like comical in retrospect. But I think the day to day was like really grounded. My grandmother and grandfather before he passed on my mother's side really raised us.
My grandmother cooked every meal we ate for, you know, most of my childhood. And bubby. Yeah, yeah. So she taught me a type of unconditional love and tenderness.
And I think more than anything, she was just an answer. She's unbelievably nurturing. I come home from school and before I'd be out of the shower, she would have laundered my clothes and folded them and put them back on my bed. She was always feeding me and food for her was very much like an expression of love.
I remember when I became a teenager and I'd sleep later and later, she'd wake me up for lunch. Just like God forbid I wasn't being said at all hours, but. I think she needs the well to you. She does.
She's 98 years old. And you know, her health has suffered. And you know, it's been a little bit of a difficult time for her. But I feel so strongly for me and my children to have the experience to be there for her and just like a small fraction of the way that she was there for me is such an extraordinary privilege.
And for them to grow up with her at our table every single meal, each night and her telling her stories and stories of my mother who they sadly didn't get to know. Are you okay? No, I can see you. No, I'm.
Yes, I'm great. I have a lot of love for this woman to tell. That just doesn't happen to me after all. What is that mixture of emotions that you're experiencing?
She taught me so much just about love. And we were talking before about connection. And you know, it's been hard to see her now as she struggles. But she's a blessing to have her in our home and living with us and a very special person.
Thank you. It's a real credit to her. Yeah. It's often a testament to the person of value that they've added to your life and how they were there for you that you would feel the way you do about her.
And that's so visible in your face. She must be more informative. Oh, for sure. So she's been.
She's an amazing person. You said that she was really taking care of you and it's with the age of 10. Mother and father, I'm assuming very, very busy. Yeah.
Explain that to me. You know, my mother was an incredible trout blazer. An amazing example for me of strength and resilience and glamour and determination and ambition. And she was a great mother too.
But she would also say like she couldn't do it alone. And she wasn't pretending she could. So she surrounded us with people who loved us. We had two amazing nannies.
One of them worked for my mother until the day she died. The other worked for my mother until the day my mother died and still works with us today. She worked after we grew up. She worked as my mother's personal assistant.
So they were very much part of our lives and part of our extended family. And of course, my grandmother, who she trusted completely with us. So she showed me a lot at a time when not many women were doing what my mother was doing inside the boardroom and on the construction sites all the time, by the way, with five-inch heels and perfectly clamped hair. So she made it look incredibly easy, but it was and continues to be very challenging to balance work in life like that, especially at a time where what she was doing was so singular.
So she really, my mother served as an unbelievable role model for me for what is possible. How to be an amazing mother who is loving and nurturing and fun and provides for children and also to be unabashedly and doggedly pursuing one's goals in a professional capacity. So she did that when she was married to my father. She did that following their divorce.
And really was just an amazing mentor for me. You're growing up in a context where your family are privileged. They have notoriety and both parents are quite absent by way of them being so busy and they're also kind of... I wouldn't say absent, but my mother wasn't home cooking us meals.
My grandmother was, but my mother was home when we ate them. And then she'd go out again. You know, her and my father were actively building their life and pursuing their passions. And for my mom, much like me today, one of her creative expressions came in the form of design and architecture, she wasn't absent.
And in other words, my father, so he was filled with more typical of that generation male role where he was less present. But there was never a doubt in my mind that I was his top priority and that he was available to me. So I used to call him from the payphone at Shapen. It was in a broom closet and never once did he not pick up.
And sometimes this office would be filled with people all of, you know, he'd be in the middle of a deal or a negotiation or some politician or whatever it was. And he'd always put me on speakerphone and then start the conversation by telling everyone how I got great grades and I'd start to blush. But he always picked up. They weren't absent, did I what?
Miss him. No, because I didn't feel like he was absent. It was just different. Like he wasn't attending all of our sports games.
But by the way, few parents were, you know, four decades ago. There's a lot more sort of active participation, like the way I am in my kids life, the way my husband is. I think it is a little different, especially for fathers today than 30 years ago. If I sat on your mother here next to us, the same age you are now, what would be the fundamental differences in those individuals?
You know, it's funny, I think back now. And my mother and I are both incredibly similar and very different. So she had like over-the-top styling glamour, you know? And I think in some ways, it was a reaction to the austerity and the control of growing up in a communist country and then Czechoslovakia, like nobody was going to tell her what to do.
Nobody was going to tell her what to say. So she actually would make my father look PC. And it was hysterical. I mean, I spent much of my childhood being like, oh, mom, please stop.
You know, it was really interesting. I feel like today, because my mother passed away unexpectedly from a fall a few years ago, they were just like, I had a lot of questions. And I really dug into her story and her history and really studied her almost in a way that I wish I'd done when she was living and I could speak to her directly. And I think I understand her, because I'm at a level of maturity and I have some of the same issues, you know, having young children.
And I think I understand her though better today than I did in some ways in her life. Like I see her more fully. And what did you understand more about her that you didn't understand while she was here after she passed? She wrote a book in the final years of her life that talked a lot more about her childhood.
And I think not uncommon for people who have experienced, you know, a lot of hardship. Sometimes they compartmentalize them and it's like forward only. And this whole part of her life she never talked about. And I think when you're younger, you ask a lot less questions.
Like now I would tell everyone who's listening, like really ask the questions, especially if people are a bit of a vault and are less inclined to look back in the past because I, you know, all of her life experience very much shaped her. This was a beautiful photo that I found doing a few minutes. And that was in Marlago on my childhood bed. There we are, ornate.
Um, yeah. She was really, I mean, she was impossibly glamorous. You had to find a photo where she didn't like incredible outfitters. Nine years old, your mother and father split up.
That's quite well publicized that your father had an affair with somebody. And this is actually where the quote that I referenced earlier about trust comes in because quite remarkably reporters were waiting outside of your school to take photos of you and ask questions about your father's affair. And the quote that I read in GQ said, this is great for me. If I didn't have that lesson, I don't know that I'd be tough.
It taught me not to trust anybody. You can never let your guard down. And I never really have since that time. So that's probably the 25-year-old version of me.
Amazing. As, you know, there's a lot of truth in it. And I think certain defensive mechanisms we create for ourselves are actually healthy. Because it was healthy for me not to be trusting before I had honed my own instincts and had learned to understand people and read people.
So I think there was nothing wrong with a 25 or 27-year-old with my lived experience answering that way. But I do like to understand, though, like every part of me completely understands that reaction to that event at like nine years old. I mean, reporters being at your school or just generally, you know, how that must have been as a kid as a school. Well, there was a level of aggression that like even today wouldn't exist with the paparazzi then, like to be shouting things and like reading quotes from tabloids to me as I'm leaving school.
To put this in context, this divorce apparently garnered more headlines than the OJ Simpson trial. So that was a lot. The difference is that once I stepped into my home, it was a safe place, you know, unless the tech TVs were blaring, which obviously they weren't during that period of time. So I think the difference today for parents and I think about a lot with my kids is you just can't protect them in the same way.
Like social media amplifies everything. So while that experience with those reporters was extremely combative and aggressive and like totally unacceptable in a way that I don't think society would allow today, today it's very much more in children's faces, you know, they can acquire the information they need and obviously, when you're young, you're curious. Again, I'm trying to like world building my head because I think understanding that early context helps us understand everybody. And if that was my early context, I think it's gonna think of Prince on me today, you know?
Well, I think we're all, you know, I think about it with my own children. Like I grew up with a lot of privilege and I've lived an extraordinary life and I never worried where my next meal came from. I never worried about being able to pay for the best school that I was able to get into. And so by so many metrics, my life was extremely comfortable and easy.
And I do think back, like some of the challenges, the moments that were disgusting or uncomfortable or even just the fact of my parents' marriage being torn apart, I think those create the pressure that turns you into who you become. Did you know what it meant nine years old? Cause like I don't know. No, I probably, then you couldn't look things up as easily.
So, you know, I don't know what I thought. I think I was probably more scared than anything of like the mob and the lights and the surprise of it all. Did you know what them separating meant? Like, do they have a conversation with you and say, you know, we're speeding up or was it?
They did. And I think the experience I had, albeit I was televised, but it was very much like any other child whose nine, whose parents are separating, you start to wonder, you know, will I be loved? Will I be forgotten? What does this mean?
You want them to get back together, or you're hoping you're trying to create peace between them, rekindle the love, you all the things that I think are like deeply normal and human. And you found out about the divorce by seeing a newspaper on your way to school one day? Yes. That wasn't the plan.
They used to have the big newsboxes with the newspaper. So, my parents attacked me down that afternoon. That's when they had attended to, but it had come out in the morning. What did the newspapers say?
I don't remember. I remember the photo. There was a picture of them with a rip down the middle. It was not an easy situation for a child, but that experience, I always look for, like, what is the positive in any situation?
And, you know, the positive for me and my siblings where we really like bonded in a different type of way because we were going through it together. It must be so interesting being in your shoes because, look, me and you're both aware that people, they want to drive a wedge between you and your father. They want a headline, they want you to say something. I can see it within you that you have a real desire to be like open and transparent.
But if I was in your shoes, I'd be thinking, like, everyone's trying to check me out. Everyone's trying to make a headline on me in my life. They want to drive a wedge between me and my father. It's difficult.
It must be difficult. It must be difficult. It must be difficult. It must be difficult.
It must be difficult. You know? I think one of the things I've learned under moments in my life of tremendous sort of pressure and scrutiny is to like find the signal and the noise. And that's probably the thing that has been most helpful to me.
It can become quite turbulent. I find myself sometimes literally like dancing in the eye of the hurricane. It's been many years of my life, but there's a lot of like peace within me. So I just don't get distracted by the outside noise.
And I think if you know what you stand for, then it really is just noise. When did you have to learn this? Because am I right in thinking, this is the first time that I saw the Trump family during the apprentice. So obviously growing up as a kid, big fan of business, we had the UK apprentice, but the US was much more interesting in my opinion.
So this is when I first understand who your father is and who you are. What was the sentiment around you as a family at this point? Because again, people can't remember pre-vortex. It was the biggest show in the world at one point.
It was this massive phenomenon. You know, he had been very famous in sort of New York and in real estate and in business circles. But this kind of like expanded awareness of him beyond those New York circles onto a global stage, that there was a lot of attention and a lot of excitement. You know, he was very similar to how he is now.
He said exactly what he was thinking, which could be polarizing at times, but it's part of what people loved about him. I think the thing about my father and my mother, is they're like deeply authentic. So you can disagree, but there's a certain amount of respect for the candor of it and the lack of fear to say what you're thinking because so many people are sort of afraid to be their true selves. You won't have to get with your words.
Yeah, but I know exactly who I am. That's why the noise doesn't affect me. I'm really proud of the fact that, you know, I've lived through some incredibly intense times where people are taking cheap shots and swinging and I don't punch back because I don't believe in sort of spending my time in focus, like being combative, like jumping into that particular arena into like the nasty swirl of social media. It's just, it's not for me.
And I've been consistent about my whole life and I feel like that sets an amazing example to my children. Where did you learn that? What is it that you've read? What are the sort of...
You just have to be yourself and you have to be true to yourself. And like, I don't allow that noise to distract me. We were talking earlier about stoicism. I think like Marcus Aurelius' meditations is so informative on so many levels.
I mean, here you have somebody, he was literally an emperor and he's writing this journal in a tent in a battlefield. So his perspective is amazing. And he once wrote that the soul becomes dyed, the color of its thoughts. And I think about that all the time.
The cost to me of living in a way that's inconsistent and not aligned with what feels right, what models the right thing for my children, what feels inherently true to me. It's too expensive. It's too expensive for my soul, so I won't do it. So, you know, there have been times when the incoming and I say, well, but that isn't right or this isn't right or I want to correct it.
And then I say, like, what's the cost of doing it? The row has another great quote. It's something paraphrasing to the effect of, you know, the cost of anything is the amount of your life you're willing to exchange for it. I focus on those things that like elevate my soul, my joy, my happiness, my connection to the people I love and care about.
Have you always been there? Because you seem more stoic now, but you know. I have like, I'm much more naturally like this. Like, I feel things, like a lot of things.
You've been in the half, right? Oh, for sure. Okay, yeah, make sense. So I have not always been like this.
Like, I had to work to be like this. And I had to, I think mature. And I had to gain like confidence. And it took me a while to really let people in.
And I think it was after my children were born, that I really experienced a different type of love. Like, cracks you open. And you're never the same, you know. And you want more of that feeling.
Like, I'm very intentional about everything that I do. Even sitting here today. I have zero interest in spending two hours having a conversation with somebody. I think it's like a bully.
Because I get good podcasts, you know? Like, I like having conversations with people, I think are interesting and curious. But in business as well, like, I'm, you know, I do less things and I do them with a lot more focus and intention. You've lived an extraordinary life and it's a very anomalous one.
But actually the lesson there about being intentional in every sense of the word, not just with what you do every day, but also what you let occupy your mind is one that I think everybody listening might drive a lot of value from. Because we live, everybody lives on a spectrum of the world's cloring at them to deviate from who they are. Some, you know, one end of the spectrum, if I take myself back to when I was 16 years old, well, you know, other than my mother telling me she wanted me to be a doctor, whatever. She wasn't really pulling me away from myself.
But then on the other end of the spectrum, you know, every time I have a podcast gets done, someone's mad at me. And everything I say can be spun in whatever. So you also, on this side of the spectrum, you have to get really, really curious if you sit on like who you are and what that is. Well, I think that's key.
Like if you don't know who you are, the mob wins. Oh, 100%. Because they tell you who you are. And then you start to believe it.
Once you know who you are, you feel sorry for the people who are like screaming at each other on social media. It takes like a beat to get there. Like I think it takes a lot of work to really understand yourself. And I think sometimes modern society, it praises sort of speed and fast pace and you know, accessibility and being available and responding quickly, then people wonder like, why don't they know themselves?
Like, why aren't they connected to something bigger? And they're not taking the time. I take time to shut down and like really go inward and ask myself every time I have a big decision, like what feels right? And even if it's hard to make a decision, like whether it's a no or a yes, if it feels aligned with your values and who you are, like it never is a mistake, ever.
You grew up in the, you know, with a family and a father that are very prominent. At some point, do you have to make the decision to become your own person? Like because I was wondering if in that context you, there's a pressure to kind of like be the same person in every regard to believe all the same things, to live the same life, to go the same path. Is there something in your journey where you go, do you know what?
I've actually got to like figure out a little smacking of your mouth. Well, no, I think about it with my own children because as a parent, it's very easy to see them as, you know, a lot of parents, they view their children as extensions of themselves. And I really try not to do that. Like they are their own people, just like I'm my own person.
Sometimes in the context of a broader public narrative, everything's sort of co-mingled and related, but we're all our own people. We obviously have conditioning, we have learned behaviors, we have some of which are great, some of which we spend part of our adulthood unwinding, but we're all like fundamentally unique and special. And I work really hard to make sure my kids see themselves, each of them individually, that they know how much I love them as like perfect, complete human beings. Not I love you because of this accomplishment or because of this sort of external validation that you've received because you're sort of perfect as you are and like in your essence.
So, so my parents taught me a lot, a lot. I love them so much. I like them in some ways. I'm very dissimilar to them in other ways.
But even though I was like the peacemaker in our house, I was also like very like true to myself. And they create and I give them credit for this. They created an environment where like the scent was okay. And so I could agree or disagree and share it with each of them and do so respectfully and privately.
And that was our home. You started off in real estate. You worked in a, it sounded like to me, you were basically an intern at a different real estate company before moving into the family business. In the family business, you know, heavy male dominated space.
How did you talk about how actually being a woman in that context proved to be in your mind an advantage of sorts? What is the context? Again, I'm in 2026 right now. So I don't have the perspective of what it was like to be a young woman in the real estate industry, but presuming in New York some sort of 20 years ago.
Well, I think I was like underestimated twice. First being the child of accomplished parents, there was an expectation that I, on one hand, some people thought I was like a savant because I was their child. But most people thought they would be, that I would phone it in, that I would lack sort of the thought process, the ambition, the preparedness. So I always worked like twice as hard as everyone else to sort of prove my worth and prove my ability to be in these rooms where truthfully, oftentimes I was in them before, I was prepared to be in them.
So that was, you know, on my mind. But I think being underestimated is not a bad thing. I think it's like a very powerful thing, actually. And it almost always worked to the detriment of the person who underestimated me.
So I think if you're somebody who's prepared and somebody underestimates you, well guess what they're not. So when you're dealing with people who are extremely accomplished, like do the work. Like know what you're doing is probably they haven't done the work when they know they're dealing with you. And I think as a young woman in real estate, especially, you know, there were women in sales and there were women in marketing, but there were very few women in development and construction and finance and acquisitions.
And I think I harnessed both in the belief, some of it may be stemming from my own insecurity, but the belief that the people would underestimate me, I harnessed that like sort of fear, that sentiment, and I used it to sort of propel me. And I used it to give me motivation and drive. And then I also would use it against the people who underestimated me, just because I was always prepared. I was over-prepared.
I always did the work. I heard you described as people I worked with you at the time, a natural-born deal-maker. And this kind of overloads with what you're saying there, that if someone underestimates you, they're actually setting themselves up to be surprised or... Well, I'd prefer to be underestimated than overestimated any type of the week.
Can you specify what environment that creates for you to then win in a deal? I think in negotiation, it's like incredibly important to know what the other person wants. Sometimes you can learn that through research, very infrequently, like you have to listen. Like you're probably a great negotiator, because you're an incredible listener.
Silence can also be a weapon. People get very uncomfortable in moments of silence, and then they start talking. And I think the more you can get a person to share with you what they consider to be a win, the more you can potentially accomplish something where you really have a mutual win-win. I've seen negotiations where you give up very little, but the person feels incredibly happy, because it's what they want.
Now, when you're dealing with a negotiation that's purely priced, that's kind of different. That's a very simple transaction. But very few negotiations are purely that. One of first and foremost in negotiation, make sure you understand what the other person wants, because you may be able to give a bit to them at very little cost than everyone's happy.
And I also think there's a lot of value in authentically building relationships. So some of the best deals I ever did were derivatives of really getting to know someone authentically and genuinely. And they want you to win. You want them to win.
And those are really beautiful types of transactions. And I believe in a lot of the projects I'm working on now are about creating things. I like building tangible things. I like creating things that uplift and solving challenging problems.
And you don't do that alone. You do that through partnership. You do that through coalitions of people who share your passion and interest. And that's very rewarding.
When you hire people, what are you looking for for your businesses? Are there, I mean, everyone's got their own hiring bias. And it often stems from their past experiences, who's about them in the past? When you're looking to hire someone for one of your organizations or for some of the projects we'll talk about in a second.
What are the key characteristics? I think first and foremost, you want someone with a strong sense of self and a strong orientation towards agency, like somebody who has agency. It's very hard to teach people, you know, you can have a brilliant person. But if they don't have good judgment or if they're not like a self-starter, it's very hard to give them that.
It's very hard to sort of give them good judgment. And some of it's like street smarts, right? We talked before about, you know, how can you both be trustworthy and not be disappointed or burned too often? You have an instinct about a person and you can read a room and that's like EQ skills.
And those are a little bit harder to teach. So I look for that. I look for good people. At the end of the day, like, I don't want to do, I deal with, I don't want to work with people.
I don't enjoy that. I don't think I're like good people because I don't want to spend my time with somebody who I don't trust or who I don't respect. So that's like really core and fundamental for me. You know, for somebody who's working with me, I actually tell my kids this all the time because I think so much of the outside world is like impressed me by what you do.
Like impressed me by what you accomplish. The grades, the trophies, the badges of like external validation and success. Like our whole life is oriented towards that. The validation that comes from the outside world.
So like I always want my kids to know like how I'm going to validate them is like be a good person. Like you want to impress me? Like be a good person. Was that the case for you?
Probably not. Probably not. I look at a Trump family. It looks like a competition between siblings and even when I think.
Yeah, I think because we're so competitive and hard. Yeah, no, I think it all like worked out. And we're all, I like to think, you know, my siblings and I grew up with like good values. And but no, like we were in a more like, I was like very competitive with my siblings.
Like, you know, my mom was like a disciplinarian. There was like a high expectation of like performance and success. And when you're calling collection father, he's reciting your great grades to the room of people. He's just.
Yeah, no, no, no, no, that was, that mattered. And it matters to a lot of parents. And by the way, it's not bad. Like having an incredibly high standard.
And to some degree, yeah. And I think look, I think it's a lot of parents. Like, I think especially like my mom was an immigrant to this country, there's like a high standard. And she didn't like humor fools, right?
One of the things I'm most proud of, I look at my daughter and there's no bar I could set for her that the bar she sets for herself isn't higher. So like, I actually view my job as a parent with her is to like give her permission to not like strive for perfection. You go on to build a business in the jewelry industry and fashion industry. And there was, I was reading about, there was a point in your career where you were offered a job by Anna Wintour.
Yeah. I thought they did kind of want you to go in that direction, but you wanted to go in the real estate business direction. She called me actually on the day I graduated from university. I went to a ward in school of business at University of Pennsylvania and she offered me a job at Vogue.
And I was like incredibly honored and flattered and groggy because she called me at eight o'clock in the morning which calling a college student at eight o'clock in the morning. You might as well call them at 4.30 in the morning. You know, like that was like I was like deeply aware from when I was a young girl that like I wanted to go into real estate. Life has taken me in different directions.
And interestingly now I'm returning some amazing projects back to my real estate roots, but I love architecture. I love design. I love it as an expression of self. You look at a city skyline and it's an expression of like a vision for hope and optimism and the amount of courage that took to build each of those buildings.
And it's extraordinary. But you did go into the fine jewelry at 26 years old and then at 33 you launched Ivanka Trump.com. And you were in a huge amount of major retailers including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus. And that's really also, that's what I knew you first for.
I knew you for running a fashion business, which was doing exceptionally well. I think from what I read it was making hundreds of millions of dollars. And then you shut it down. Yeah, yeah.
It was kind of like lightning in a bottle. I caught a moment. So I was still sort of leading the charge at our family, the estate business. I had young children at home or was just starting to have children when I first launched fine jewelry.
Ultimately, we ended up having 11 different categories of peril, footwear, sunglasses, fragrance. But we created an excessively priced line that was feminine and beautiful, but for like a multi-dimensional woman. Like at the time when I was coming up, the outfits that women were buying for work were so far from aspirational and they couldn't transition with the woman to the date night they would have that evening. Or afterward, drinks with their girlfriends.
It was like nobody was posting on Instagram like what they were wearing to work. And so we thought like, let's bridge the gap and create something for a modern woman and it caught fire. And it was an amazing success. We were doing close to $800 million in sales annually.
When I shut it down and I went into government, it was great. You were doing 800 million in sales annually when you shut it down. Yeah. Why did you shut it down?
I went into government and you always have to sort of be moving forward. And I built a team of women who were oriented towards forward momentum. And I had to put it on ice. And this was all just part of the roles of complying with the Office of Government Ethics.
So they basically look at everything you have and they say, sell this, put this into a trust, do this, do that, do this. So you do that and for my own business, they weren't allowed to use my image. They weren't allowed to grow the business in terms of new accounts or internationally. And that was fine for a moment, but at the end of the day, you need like growth.
And so I thought it would be easier to end on a high note than to allow the business to sort of stagnate. And I also felt like for myself, I'm always looking forward. Like, I don't like to look back and I feel the experience of this new experience. I mean, serving was so expanding.
Most people wouldn't give up an $100 million annual business to go into government. Why did you? You know, I thought about the version of me in 40 years that when asked the question to serve by my father with the time knew no one in Washington, D.C., at all, said no and just proceeded with life as usual. And that didn't like sit right with me.
So I had no intention of serving. And a few weeks after he won, he asked Jared and me to go with him and sort of help him navigate this new environment. And my eyes grew big and he joked with me. He's like, but I have to warn you, they're going to come at you hard.
They're probably going to hate you. You're too young. You're too young. And he like cried.
I'm like, oh my God. That was like the anti-sale. But, you know, he asked us for help. And I feel incredibly privileged that he gave us the opportunity to serve a country we love so much.
We hadn't been expecting it. We hadn't set up our lives for it. We were loving the path we were on and the work we were doing. But you also, you know, can't put your head in the sand and like life had changed.
As much as I'd like to say, like, oh, he wins business as usual. Your life has changed. You didn't choose this though. In fact, you didn't choose most of these things.
I look at your life and I go, from a very young age, you've not chosen the context which you've been thrust into because of your father's ambitions. And I mean, I can see it in your face that it kind of rings true. But I think that's true for all of us, right? To some degree, like our path is determined by our circumstances.
I... Not really. Not really in the same way. This is a little bit different with politics in the presidency.
Even from nine years old, you're not choosing to leave school and have reporters treat you like that and you're not choosing these other things along the way. And then your father decides he wants to be president of the United States. He had a political career where he built up slowly. He woke up one day and was like...
He was drinking water from a fire hose for all of us. It was a lot. Normally you cut your teeth on, you know, some local election as a family, had the experience. The first time you ever run for office was president, anyone.
So it was a radical adjustment period for all of us, but boy did it, oh yeah, I did. I mean, it was hard to believe myself because everyone was saying that he wouldn't. And I'd say, well, these people probably know what they're talking about, but it felt like he would. And you know, so for me, that time was extraordinary because I really believed, you know, I lived in New York City.
I thought I was surrounded by diverse minds and opinions and perspectives and viewpoints. And I really thought I had sort of a lot of exposure to ideas and his campaign like ripped it open for me and that I realized like the bubble that I was in and suddenly I got out into the country and I heard from people who had very divergent views on a number of issues. Some of it reinforced my existing beliefs, other times it completely changed my perspective and orientation. So it was extremely mind-expanding.
So when you ask like, oh, why didn't I go back to what I was doing, I think like, you know, you get thrown into something and you learn and you grow and you change. And I felt as challenging it was as that moment in my life to say, yes, when my father asked us to go help them, I felt like it was an amazing privilege to be able to serve. So New York always has a strange energy to it because people start talking about their goals, fresh starts and new habits. But the reality is that most people carry the same ideas they had last year into the New Year and guilty of that too.
And they still don't end up doing anything with them. And I get why starting something new, especially if it's a business or project is overwhelming. Before you start, you're looking for the perfect moment and to be the perfect version of yourself. And really what matters most is taking that first step.
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That's pipedrive.com slash CEO. I'll see you over there. I watched interviews going back to the 1980s where it sounded like your father was playing with the idea. I remember that Oprah interview.
That's subsequently gone viral of him saying that if it got so bad in the U.S., he would never rule it out totally. He thought he would win because he'd never gone into anything to lose, as I think you said. And even 1980, and into the owner, Bre, God pronounce that name. He said, maybe I'll run for president.
I don't know. Did you have any sense that this was at all on the horizon? Not really. That's interesting.
No. It was actually where we discussed things that weren't sort of the normal. How was your day at school? We spoke a lot about real estate and about building and we're going to go into the family business.
And I do think he sort of toyed with it in his mind for a while. I do remember once thinking it was real, I was 16 and I was at boarding school and I called him up. I go, oh my God, I bet that you're going to run for president. This is going to ruin my life.
I think I was like a stairacle and he's like, don't worry about it, not happening. You know, I think he was thinking about the options he was given as a voter and he was dissatisfied. And I think he was beginning to formulate his perspective on what he would do differently. But it was not, my childhood, that was not an ambition of his that was at least articulated to us.
You know, some of the ideas you mentioned, that Oprah interview, he was talking about trade policy being deeply unfair to American workers. You know, his viewpoint remained consistent over time and remains consistent to this day on exactly that about trade policy and many of the things he articulated them are very true for him to this day. And then in 2015, when you're 33, my age, you learn two weeks before he announces that he's going to announce that he wants to run for president. I get how do you receive that?
Isn't it like an existential panic? Like you had a game? I came together as a family in Bedminster and he shared with us his intention and he asked me to introduce him. And I said to him, I'm like, well, are you really doing this?
Are you really going to do this? He was coming down the escalator and I'm trying to like introduce him and give the speech. I'm like, is he going to get up here and actually it was so quick. But I think, you know, I think he had debated it in his mind for a long time.
And then when he pulled the trigger, it was full steam. Life hasn't been the same since, in many respects. No, it hasn't. But it's been, I mean, it's been an extraordinary ride.
There's been highs and there's been lows, but we've done a lot of living, so a lot of living. Of which he's spent four years working in the White House. Some of your key headline achievements are doubling the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000, benefiting 40 million Americans with an average of $2,000 per year, helping secure paid family leave for federal workers, helping pass the Great American Outdoors Act, which is one of the largest conservative bills since the national park system was created, leading efforts to modernize career and technical education, providing $1.3 billion annually to over 13 billion students and helping to pass nine pieces of legislation combating human trafficking and child exploitation. And then it ended.
Were you happy it ended? Because I was like, well, what do you think is happening? I left it all in the field. You know, I don't look back and say, like, I don't have regrets.
Like, I worked as hard as I could. And I'm incredibly proud of what I was able to accomplish in those four years, and like, I don't regret it in any way. But it's, you know, it's a sacrifice to my children. And, you know, it's a great thing.
And, you know, it's a great thing. And, you know, it's a great thing. It's a great thing. It's a great thing.
But it's, you know, it's a sacrifice to my children. And it's hard work, you know. So I feel both incredibly privileged for the opportunity, but also I don't have what they refer to as Potomac fever. You know, there's some people that, once they have the experience of being in those rooms and close to that type of power, they just like hang around the hoop constantly like cycling back in.
I feel like I wasn't expecting to serve in this capacity, at least not at this stage of my life. My father asked me to help him. We uprooted our lives and went and did just that and scored a lot of wins. I mean, you think about something like the Child Tax Credit, 40 million American families benefited from that policy, an average of $2,400 in their pockets.
That's extraordinarily meaningful and consequential and I'm so proud to have been able to do that. Nine pieces of human trafficking legislation, the work that I did around vocational education and skills training, which is all the more relevant as we sort of surf the oncoming tsunami that is AI, you know, the fact that we were able to get the private sector to commit to scaling or reskilling 16 million American workers, the fact that we were able to facilitate the creation of a million apprenticeship opportunities in the United States. These are deeply meaningful. So I'm so proud of my service.
I feel deeply honored that he trusted me to pursue these different verticals and to work alongside of him. And I also know that it's really hard and for my children, you know, my first responsibility is to be their mom. It was true then as well, of course, and I did the best I could every single day to be everywhere I needed to be. But my kids are a different age now and there's a finite period of time before they leave our home.
I think, you know, I look at my teenage daughter, she's 14 and even if like a quarter of my interactions with her through her closed bedroom door, like I need to be present and I need to be there, it's not theoretical for me because now I know the sacrifice that they would have to bear the cost to them of if I went back into service and I'm not willing to let them pay that price. So for me, it's like actually a rather easy decision. I made it immediately, you know, that in this moment I'm where I need to be. It's also a different time.
You know, now my father has a deep bench of people raising their hand who want to help and participate. That wasn't true. Before he's really refined his policies, his beliefs and has a lot of conviction in terms of what he wants to do. So, so I feel like for him, it's amazing.
He's got the team he needs and for me, I think, you know, my priorities are my family and that just feels really good and right for me. Well, weren't you prepared for? I asked the same question to Michelle when she was here about, you know, you get up and call for me, dad and he says, come help. One has a vision of what that might look like but there's surprises Michelle talked to me about so many of the things she had no idea would be the case.
I wasn't prepared for, you're not prepared for any of that. There's nothing that trains you for the experience and I think one of the things she realized pretty quickly is like power just like money makes people more of what they already are. You see that very much in playing out in politics and in life, right? I also think you realize people are just people.
Like you look at and I've, you know, I had exposure to some of the great leaders of business and now I was being exposed to leaders on a global stage of countries. Sometimes they were monarchies, other times they were elected democracies and then all sorts of variants of that, you know, where, and you realize at the end of the day, like, people are people. You know, some of them, their kids don't speak to them, they've got to go fight with their wife that morning, they're, you know, they're just people and now some of them feel extraordinarily historic. You meet a person and say, this person feels consequential.
Others, none of them, you leave and say, I wonder how this person ever got elected to this, you know, high office but I think it removes the veil and the mystery and I think it removed for me a lot of any of like intimidation I may have in like interacting with another human being. I think it's a very important situation. I also change quite considerably. I did, yeah.
You know, because politics is a dangerous game. I think I heard something that said being president is the most dangerous job in the world when you look at the fatality rate. And obviously we've seen political assassinations in this country even in recent times but your father was also shot out hitting the ear when he was on the campaign trail more recently. What's that been like?
And what does it actually, can you give me specifics on what that actually, like it means? When you become involved in politics, how does life change from a security perspective? Yeah. I think, well, it changes radically.
Now we're protected by US Secret Service and I'm so grateful to the men and women who take care of my family, took care of my father, protected him and risking their own lives to do so and now do so for me and my children. So very grateful to all of them. But it's scary. We live in very troubling times and like, you know, the fact that there is a correlation between service and violence is terrible in and of itself but that's the world we live in.
So, you know, I have to acknowledge that reality and decide my family as best I can and make sure they're protected. And I'm very fortunate that the Secret Service are the best in the world at doing that. How about you in 2024 when you had the news that your father had been shot in the ear? There was an assassination attempt on his life.
Do you remember where you were? And what's that like as a daughter? What are all the feelings and thoughts? I was in Bedminster, New Jersey and there was a lot of commotion and the televisions were on.
So I saw it almost immediately and out of my house, I actually don't love watching television, but out by the pool and the vistra and it was almost real time, it was before he had stood back up that I had seen what was transpiring and two of my children were there. So, you know, my first reaction was to turn them away. But it was incredibly difficult, interestingly, I knew real time in that moment that he was fine. Like I had, I just knew that like it wasn't his time.
So I was horrified and I was scared and I was protective of my children, but I also I didn't believe like the worst possible outcome had transpired. Thank God. And thank God it, it hadn't, and then I saw that night when he came home from the hospital because he was also staying that morning he had left from Bedminster and that evening he returned after he left the hospital and it's late one to a clock in the morning and Jared and I stayed up and we met his cars he was pulling in and I just feel like just incredibly lucky that he was protected on that day, but it's, you know, when you can't take things for granted in life and I've learned that in numerous ways, that being one of them. My mom passed prematurely when my husband had a scare with cancer, you know, all of these challenges that remind you how finite and how precious every moment of this life we live are make you realize you just can't take anything for granted.
And I think as you move through them and, you know, God willing, you're able to and we were so fortunate that day that this was a failed attempt to take his life. I'm not a realized one, but you just I think you recommit to sort of love and connection and to a recognition of how short our time here on Earth is and how you have to value in someone shooting your dad and trying to kill your dad. This is quite a difficult question to ask, but it's like if if most of us will never be able to relate to the fact that members of the public want our parents to be deceased and that's the reality of the situation for your father is someone shot at him was trying to execute him publicly and I wonder how that again doesn't make you negative to the world. Because I don't allow it to.
What does that accomplish being negative towards the world? I think that brings more negativity into the world. Even for the person that shot at your father? There's a lot of sickness there and I, you know, I think that forgiveness is a difficult thing in this regard, but I think you have to, um, his living was a blessing.
So I could look at what happened and be rightfully traumatized by the experience. And nobody could really argue with that, but you have to, you have to move through it. And, and on the opposite side of that is the fact that he's with us today, that he didn't die, that my father is alive. And that is an extraordinary blessing for me as his, as his daughter.
In life, you have a choice only in how you respond. And I choose to see the positive outcome that, that transpired and well there. The mind plays out scenarios, right? The mind plays out the scenario that where he, he didn't make it, whether he turned it in the direction, the bullet hit him, and you presumably played out that scenario of what, how different life would have been.
Well, seeing it on repeat for months on television, on the news, was certainly not the easiest thing. And that's part of why I just, I, even before it, I never left watching the news. I'll read the news. But no, I mean, he's here, you know, really felt like a miracle and a blessing and that's what I focus on.
I can see the emotion again in you, which is, again, it's fascinating to me because I've, you know, I've heard, you know, people around you speak about it, but the emotional toll seems to be more source would present in you about that incident than it does about other people that I've heard speak about this. Well, he's my father. He's my father and he almost lost his life that day, but he didn't, and I feel truly grateful for that. And in his second season of his presidential career, you decide that you want to pursue many other things, many other things, many other business developments and real estate developments.
You step away from politics in 2022, I believe, you announced that you would not be returning for the third election campaign. You said this time around, I'm choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we're creating as a family, I do not plan to be involved in politics. You also said on Lexus Park House, politics is a pretty dark world. There's a lot of darkness, a lot of negativity, and it's just really at odds with what feels good to me as a human being.
I was thinking this earlier about, like, minutes ago, I was thinking, your nature, as I've known you, seems to be the antithesis of this type of world, like fame, you know. Totally true. There's this like gladiatorial aspect of it. It's just like not for me.
I care deeply about policy, about helping people, and I think there's all sorts of ways to do that, and I'm doing that now in the private sector, but I don't like politics, but I do care about policy quite deeply, and I've tried to focus on that element of service. Do you feel the need to express, you never do because you don't punch back at the world publicly, which is, I think, something to be in mind, and I've learned actually quite a lot from everything you said there about not feeling the need to punch back at the world. It takes training. It takes real training.
I was actually reading recently about the crow, and I thought it was a great metaphor for life, so crow is a highly intelligent animal, extraordinarily so, in some cases, but it can get aggressive and territorial, and it's one of the only animals that will actually attack an eagle. A crow will go, and sometimes because it's being territorial, and other times are fun, and the crow will actually mob the eagle, and it will land on its back, and it will start pecking it. The eagle's response to this, which naturally the eagle's many times over larger than the crow, isn't to twist and turn and knock the crow off or defend itself and then go on the offense. It's just to fly up, and it flies up while the crow continues to just peck at its back, it flies up and up, and the crow is not built for high-altitude flight, so at a certain point, as the eagle flies up, not expanding any energy in the counter-attack, the crow just falls off.