Ashley Biden is more than just one of former Vice President Joe Biden's children.
She is leading a path of her own as a social worker, activist, and entrepreneur.
So how has she changed over the years?
This is the stunning transformation of Ashley Biden.
Even with the powerful family Ashley Biden has always had surrounding her, she still
believes she led a pretty normal childhood.
She would clip coupons alongside her mother before grocery shopping, act in school plays,
and occasionally accompany her father, Senator Joe Biden, to work.
However, this never seemed like a big deal to her.
She told DETV,
"When I was little, you know...you see your dad and the work that he does, but you don't
really...cognitively really get the significance.
Dad was dad to me."
"Dad was home, took the train to and from D.C. every night.
He was usually home for dinner."
She decided to study culture and anthropology at Tulane University.
After graduating with her Bachelor's degree, she didn't want to depend on her parents as
she was trying to decide what to do now with her life.
She returned to her hometown to take time to figure out the next step to take regarding
her career.
She told Politico,
"I actually worked as a waitress in a small pizza shop in Wilmington, Delaware for I think
it was a few months, while I was figuring out where I wanted to go."
While watching her father chase important issues as a U.S. senator, Ashley Biden began
to see at a young age the injustice around her.
She told Politico,
"I had always known I wanted to be a social worker."
When she was in elementary school, Biden started a campaign of her own.
She found out a makeup company was testing on animals and realized that something was
wrong.
Biden told Glamour,
"I organized my school to start writing letters to [the company]."
Her next focus was dolphins.
When her father would come home from work, she often expressed how concerned she was
that these animals were getting trapped in tuna nets.
She continued,
"My dad connected me with Congressman Barbara Boxer, who I nicknamed the 'dolphin lady,'
and she got me onto the floor to help lobby Republican [congressmen] for The Dolphin Protection
Consumer Information Act."
Looking back, it all makes sense.
One of Biden's past colleagues at the Delaware Center for Justice told Delaware Today that
she, quote, "sees social justice as the cause she's been called to champion, and no one
is going to change her mind."
Sure, Ashley Biden is known by most as the daughter of the 47th vice president of the
United States, but her father wasn't the only one in her family who had a significant influence
on her.
She told Politico,
"Also, my mom and my aunts.
I also had two amazing brothers, so they've all helped me to be brave and courageous."
Joe Biden has expressed on multiple occasions how much he believes his daughter is similar
to his wife.
He once said,
"She's like her mother.
She has a backbone like a ramrod."
Her mother, Dr. Jill Biden, holds many college degrees, so it's really no wonder that her
daughter felt it was important to be educated as well.
Ashley told Glamour,
"The passion started at a very young age.
My dad is a lifelong servant; my mom was a public-school teacher, it's in my DNA."
In addition to that, Ashley grew up watching other women in her family hold powerful positions.
Her aunt Valerie, for example, managed her father's first political campaign.
Joe Biden said of his campaign manager:
"She's my best friend in my life."
Ashley Biden's parents made an effort to instill in their children that family was the most
important thing.
Even with his busy work schedule, Joe Biden made it a priority to be there for all of
them, and his daughter told DETV that he always was.
Ashley once shared,
"Dad was home every night to read books, say my prayers, and tuck me in bed."
Even then, Ashley could always rest assured that her father wasn't far.
She added,
"He had a rule his entire career that if one of his family members called when he was in
an important meeting, wherever he was, that they had to get him out of that meeting."
"And if I have a procedural vote and one of my kid's parent-teacher meetings, I'm going
to the parent-teacher meeting."
However, it wasn't just the end of the day that her father dedicated to their family.
Throughout high school, Ashley was a lacrosse and field hockey player.
She shared,
"One time, I had a big game, and dad actually took a helicopter and landed in the football
field to see my game."
She laughed as she told Politico how embarrassed she was at the time, but it was the state
championship, after all.
This "family first" mentality is one that she continues to live by today.
With family being cited as such an important aspect of Ashley Biden's life, it's really
no wonder that she began her career by working to help children.
Biden told Elle,
"I got a real sense that some people had a lot, and some had nothing at all.
Even as a child, I had a hard time reconciling the inherent unfairness of it all."
Once Biden finished up with college, she moved to Philadelphia and began her career in a
children's mental health clinic.
Four years later, Biden went back to school for her master's degree and then found herself
back in her hometown of Wilmington, where she worked directly with youth in foster care
as a case manager for West End Neighborhood.
From there, she worked her way up to make an impact at the state level.
She worked directly in the kids' department of juvenile detention centers.
Biden told Delaware Today,
"Youth intervention, and any intervention, really, is about breaking a cycle.
If a kid goes to the equivalent of prison and doesn't get services during and after
his residency there, what has he gained?"
It was 2009 when Ashley Biden's father made it to the White House as the vice president
to President Barack Obama.
Though it was an absolute honor for him to have the title of Vice President, Joe Biden's
family was forced to take on a new set of titles as well.
Sometimes, these roles were challenging.
Ashley Biden told Politico,
"I think the hardest thing for me was actually watching the media criticize my father, someone
who I adore, and, you know, I feel like a lot of times they got it wrong."
The pressures of her father's new job also put added pressures on her living in his shadow.
During that time, Ashley Biden was in her 20s and felt she was at a point in her life
where she was still just trying to figure things out.
She told Politico:
"I used to feel like I had to prove something...[now] I own who I am."
As if the pressure of being the daughter of the Vice President wasn't enough, Ashley Biden
also felt added pressure from the media.
Barack Obama's daughters, Sasha and Malia Obama, dealt with photographers while entering
and leaving their White House home.
And though Ashley Biden took on her role from afar, that didn't necessarily make the public
scrutiny any easier.
A so-called friend of Biden's tried to sell a video to the media for $2 million of her
allegedly doing drugs.
The video in question was never released publicly, but it still caused controversy in the political
landscape.
So it's really no wonder that Ashley Biden likes to keep a pretty low profile.
She keeps her social media accounts private and seems to not discuss much about her personal
life at all, keeping the focus on her work in social justice.
In 2014, Biden was invited to participate in Politico's Women Rule Keynote along with
her father, who was the vice president at the time.
When given the platform to speak about her experiences, views on social justice, and
her life in the spotlight, she made it clear that she's a very private person.
"I actually feel comfortable, and, in these types of things, I normally don't."
Shortly after Ashley Biden's father took office, her brother Beau was hospitalized following
a stroke.
As his family rushed to the hospital to see him, a doctor who he had become friends with
noticed his sister.
It was then that Biden's brother tried to talk her into going out with the doc.
She wasn't so sure at first, but, reluctantly, she decided that one date wouldn't hurt.
In 2011, after dating Dr. Howard Krein for almost a year, Biden and Krein got engaged.
Her father told Politico that he didn't even hesitate when Krein asked him for his daughter's
hand in marriage, an old-fashioned move in today's world.
He said,
"From the moment he met Ashley, he treated her as an equal.
He respected her opinion...It was clear, and he made her laugh.
That's why I love her husband."
Biden and Krein married a year later in her hometown of Wilmington.
"It's just, y'know, is what both our parents taught us.
Everything works if the marriage is working."
As if life hadn't become chaotic enough with her father working in the White House, Ashley
Biden's brother Beau became diagnosed with brain cancer following his stroke and passed
away in 2015.
Her mother, Jill Biden, told Delaware Today,
"It was very important to Ashley to carry on Beau's legacy, the reforms in criminal
justice, his work with children."
That's exactly what she did.
Ashley decided to stay busy and focus on being a change to the injustices that society and
children were continuing to face.
She said,
"Everyone struggles with something.
Some simply struggle more.
I've had a lot of advantages, but that didn't prevent my life from spinning out of control
or the devastation of losing my brother.
But what I had was support and safety of being vulnerable."
Shortly after Beau's death, Ashley Biden decided to focus her grief into a new project.
Her passion for social justice led to a passion for fashion.
In 2015, she founded Livelihood, an American-made clothing company that focuses on bringing
attention to social justice.
The logo is an arrow, which Biden told The Lily was inspired by her brother.
She said that, quote, "we have to sometimes be pulled all the way down to shoot forward."
Biden decided that the focus of her fashion line would be hoodies.
She told Today,
"The hoodie is universal.
It was once ubiquitous of the labor movement; currently, it's important in the social justice
movement.
It's universal in the sense that you can see a construction worker on the side of the road
who is 60 years old wearing a hoodie, and you see children on the playground wearing
hoodies."
Instead of just creating a good old fashioned hoodie, Biden made sure that proceeds from
her collection would go to programs that focus on alleviating poverty by training, educating,
and assisting in job placement in her hometown.
"I'm extremely proud of her!
She's been trying to change the world since she been three years old.
I think she's gonna do it."
The decision for former vice president Joe Biden to run for president in 2020 was not
an easy one for him to make.
He told USA Today that he had to decide if he was, quote, "comfortable taking the family
through a very, very, very difficult campaign."
He has publicly shared many times that he considered running in 2016, but he felt he
needed to be with his family following his son's passing.
When he finally decided it was time, the entire Biden family was there to support him.
Ashley Biden told Politico,
"My father is a man of integrity, honesty, and he has incredible passion, so I think
he would be an absolutely incredible president."
As her passion for changing the economy continues to drive her career, perhaps she will be following
in her father's political footsteps.
In 2019, Ashley Biden left the Delaware Center for Justice to be able to focus on her growing
brand Livelihood.
So what's next for Ashley, and for Livelihood?
She told the Today show,
"My middle name is Blazer, and I wear blazers all the time to work.
You can dress them up and down.
I would love to work on that in the future."
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