What did Ivana Trump do for living?
Executive summary
Ivana Trump built a multifaceted career as a model, business executive within the Trump Organization, designer and media personality, and later as an author and consumer-products entrepreneur; her public identity combined earned roles and the visibility that came from marrying Donald Trump [1] [2]. Reporting across encyclopedic and news outlets describes her as vice president of interior design for the Trump Organization, president/CEO of properties including Trump's Castle and the Plaza Hotel, a fashion and jewelry designer with House of Ivana products sold on shopping networks, and a writer of memoirs and advice columns [1] [2] [3].
1. Early career: model and athlete who moved from Czechoslovakia to Canada and then New York
Ivana began her working life in the 1970s as a model and competitive skier after leaving Czechoslovakia, working in Canada on runway and promotional assignments — including promotional work tied to the 1976 Montreal Olympics — before landing in New York where she met Donald Trump in 1976 [4] [1] [5].
2. Executive roles inside the Trump Organization: design chief and hotel/casino manager
Once married, she took on formal managerial positions inside her husband’s business empire, holding titles such as vice president of interior design, CEO and president of Trump's Castle in Atlantic City, and manager/president of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan — responsibilities that reporting and biographical sources identify as part of her business resume [1] [2] [6].
3. Reinventing herself after divorce: brand-building, design and retail
Following her high-profile divorce, Ivana pursued independent ventures: she launched fashion and jewelry lines under names like House of Ivana, marketed fragrances and accessories through outlets including QVC London and the Home Shopping Network, and claimed substantial earnings from those ventures in later memoirs and profiles [2] [3].
4. Media work and authorship: public person, columnist and memoirist
Ivana expanded into media and publishing, writing multiple books (including a memoir) and penning an advice column for Globe, while appearing in documentary and entertainment projects that emphasized her life as a businesswoman and social figure — roles cataloged in entertainment biographies and mainstream obituaries [2] [7] [3].
5. How much was earned versus inherited visibility: the tension in public narratives
Sources present a dual narrative: some profiles and encyclopedias stress managerial and creative roles she held inside the family business and her later commercial successes, while other entries and commentators note that a considerable portion of her fame and opportunity flowed from being part of a celebrity real-estate family and a 1980s social scene — framing her as both an active business operator and a beneficiary of high visibility [1] [5] [4].
6. What contemporary reporting does and doesn’t say — limits of the record
Biographical summaries and mainstream obituaries consistently list her job titles, product lines and authorship, but public sources differ on the scale and independence of her business accomplishments versus the advantages conferred by marriage; available reporting documents positions, product sales channels and publications but does not uniformly quantify the financial or operational scope of every venture, so precise accounting of revenues or the day-to-day scope of her executive authority is not fully established in these sources [1] [2] [3].
7. Bottom line: a working model turned corporate executive, designer and entrepreneur
Summing the sourced record, Ivana Trump’s working life spanned modeling and competitive sport in her early years, operational leadership roles in the Trump Organization (interior design, hotel and casino management), and post-divorce brand and media entrepreneurship as a designer, author and television/shopping-network personality — a public career that mixed hands-on roles with the amplified platform she occupied as a prominent social figure [4] [1] [2] [3].