Ashley Biden speaking virtually to the Democratic National Convention
Credit: Getty
After Joe Biden gave his election victory speech a woman danced on to the stage, waving her arms in the air, and celebrating.
It was the kind of enthusiasm America is set to see regularly from the country’s new First Daughter, Ashley Biden.
Ms Biden, 39, is expected to be a very different First Daughter than Ivanka Trump. She is unlikely to take a role in her father’s administration.
But like Ms Trump she will have her father’s ear for issues that she cared deeply about.
Ms Biden is the only child of Joe and Jill Biden, and half-sister to Hunter Biden, and the late Beau Biden.
Her commitment to lobbying politicians began early.
At the age of nine she became deeply concerned about dolphins getting caught in tuna nets, so she lobbied her own father, who was then a US senator representing Delaware.
Joe Biden would arrive home in Wilmington to be greeted by posters and research projects advocating for dolphins.
Joe Biden smiles with his family after announcing his first presidential campaign in 1988
Credit: Bettmann
The young Ms Biden went to Washington to speak to members of Congress and her father, along with California senator Barbara Boxer, wrote a bill that became the 1990 Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act.
Ms Biden went on to study cultural anthropology at Tulane University in Louisiana, and graduated with a masters in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. At Tulane she was arrested for marijuana possession.
While Ms Trump has spent her whole life in the spotlight, Ms Biden has lived quietly in Delaware.
In the period when Ms Trump was appearing on The Apprentice with her father, Ms Biden was a social worker at the Delaware department of children’s services.
In a 2017 interview with Glamour magazine she described how the Biden family’s commitment to service had filtered down to her.
"The passion started at a very young age," she said. "My Dad is a lifelong public servant. My mom was a public school teacher. It’s in my DNA.’
From 2014 to 2019 she led the Delaware Center for Justice, which works toward criminal justice reform.
During that time Ms Biden told Delaware Today: "We need to accept that most people are not inherently bad. I am in my job because our system is malfunctioning. Mass incarceration isn’t the answer."
She campaigned against he death penalty and discrimination, and for projects including youth intervention, improved education and housing.
Wilmington itself, a city of 70,000 people, has a per capita income of $24,000, and 25 per cent of families are below the poverty line.
"What they [children] are seeing out there isn’t the American Dream. It’s discrimination, welfare, life on the edge,” Ms Biden told Delaware Today. "I think we all can agree, the world needs a lot more kindness."
Ashley Biden was active in her father's presidential campaign
Credit: Gary Gershoff
In 2017, she used New York Fashion week to launch the Livelihood Collection, a clothes brand, including hoodies, which raises money for communities in Delaware.
At the event Joe Biden said: "I’m very proud of her. She’s been trying to change the world since she was three."
Ms Biden has been married for eight years to Howard Krein, a plastic surgeon, to whom she was introduced by her late brother Beau.
She was active in her father’s presidential campaign, speaking at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and hosting an event for women in Wisconsin.
Her family has spoken about how, after the devastation of Beau’s death from brain cancer in 2015, she committed to carry on his work, particularly in the area of criminal justice reform.
There has so far been little suggestion that will include a role in the administration of her father.
But friends have indicated that her mission will continue.
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