What is Nikki Haley’s net worth?
The former governor of South Carolina, who served as ambassador to the UN briefly during the Trump administration, saw her fortune soar in recent years.
The GOP primary contest to top the Republican presidential ticket in the 2024 elections has been whittled down to just two candidates. Nikki Haley, despite trailing Donald Trump by over 55 points in the polls, has vowed to keep going with her campaign saying “we aren’t going anywhere.”
The two competitors have history together. The former governor of South Carolina was tapped by Trump in 2017 to serve as ambassador to the United Nations. She departed unexpectedly from the position after just two years, telling the then-president in her resignation letter, “As a businessman, I expect you will appreciate my sense that returning from government to the private sector is not a step down but a step up.”
After serving fourteen straight years in public office, the move truly did pay off for her. Haley’s net worth increased more than eight-fold, within one 11-month period earning more than during her time in public service.
What is Nikki Haleys’s net worth?
Upon leaving public service in January 2019, Forbes reports that Haley had a net worth of less than $1 million. However, she was able to use her national prominence to line up gigs on the speaking circuit, join the boards of major companies and win two book deals allowing her to amass a fortune of around $8 million in the time since.
She was appointed to the board of directors at aerospace giant Boeing in 2019. There she raked in $700,000 in consulting fees in addition to over $300,000 in cash and stock. Haley stepped down a year later, but remains on the board of United Homes Group, where she has pulled in $250,000 not including other sweeteners.
Haley published a book in 2019, “With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace,” which sold 100,000 copies. She then received a $350,000 advance for her book “If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women” which was published in 2022.
Most lucrative of all have been her speaking engagements that brought her around $2.5 million over an 11-month period ending in January 2023. These were delivered to banks, businesses and advocacy groups. The content of her speeches however, hasn’t been disclosed.
This windfall allowed Haley and her husband to purchase a $2.4 million, 5,700-square-foot home on Kiawah Island, a gated community, near Charleston, South Carolina in 2019. The property has now almost doubled in value.
Who is Nikki Haley?
The last challenger to Trump was born in South Carolina to immigrant Sikh parents from Indian. She was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa, but is known by her middle name which means “little one” in Punjabi. She met her husband, Michael Haley, at University and the couple have two children.
Haley and her husband had modest earnings as young adults. She briefly worked for a waste management company after graduating from Clemson University before going to work at her parent’s clothing business, Exotica International. Her husband also joined the family business in charge of men’s wear, she was the chief financial officer.
She would go on, however, to be elected to the South Carolina General Assembly in 2004. The state legislator job was part-time paying just $22,000, which she supplemented with income from a retainer she acquired from the firm Wilbur Smith Associates to scout potential new clients. That gig along with another more lucrative one, fundraising for a prominent hospital in her home county, tripled her income in just three years.
However, she didn’t disclose her work with Wilbur Smith Associates until 2010 when she was running for the governorship of South Carolina. A State House ethics investigation was opened in 2012 but the Republican-led committee concluded that the then-Governor Haley had not violated any state ethics rules.