Melania Trump has hired a chief of staff, a move that puts her first official mark on the White House, but the first lady’s office is likely to be pretty lonely for the foreseeable future.

Trump herself hasn’t been in Washington since her husband’s inauguration weekend, and it’s not clear when she will return. She has said she plans to continue living in Trump Tower in Manhattan while son Barron finishes out the school year.


And even though Lindsay Reynolds, a private fundraising planner and former official in President George W. Bush’s visitors office, will be joining the second floor of the East Wing, there’s little insight on when she’ll get co-workers.

Key roles still open in the first lady’s office include the press operation, scheduling, correspondence and the social office.

The relatively empty first lady’s office is a break from Melania Trump’s predecessors. Laura Bush and Michelle Obama each assumed the role with a chief of staff and a social secretary at the ready.

But some say it’s not surprising that Melania Trump hasn’t staked her claim on the office of the first lady, since she has yet to settle into the White House. The first lady’s role comes with a budget and a staff that technically reports to the office of the president, but there’s no statutory authority and its contours have been shaped by tradition.

“We have become accustomed with the activism of the first lady, but there’s nothing that is required and there really is no specific job description for the first lady,” said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to Laura Bush and an executive in residence at American University. “Each occupant gets to rewrite how they want to handle it.”

Reynolds was involved in planning the inauguration under former Vogue events planner Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who is acting as a consultant to the first lady. Key roles still open in the first lady’s office include the press operation, scheduling, correspondence and the social secretary’s office, which plans state dinners and other formal events.

Residence staff had to step in and organize the swearing-in ceremony for White House appointees and the lunch with British Prime Minister Theresa May last week. “The most important person in the first lady’s office is the social secretary,” said McBride. She cautioned that working without a social secretary is not a “long-term solution.”

“Clearly you’re going to have a lot of social events that will require the expertise of a social secretary,” she said.

Ebs Burnough, former deputy social secretary to Michelle Obama, said it’s not necessary to have an active first lady’s office as long as the social secretary has access to the Oval Office. “The social secretary can conceivably not see the first lady and just deal directly with the president,” he said.

Transition officials sought guidance from staffers who worked for Obama and for Laura Bush, according to sources, which is customary. Since the transition, Jessica Boulanger, a Washington-based communications executive and the founder of a line of maternity wear, has been helping the first lady field press requests pro bono, she said.

Obama’s East Wing was largely staffed by Inauguration Day, and even staff attracted an unusual degree of attention — including social secretary Desiree Rogers, who scored a spread in Vogue. Obama used her role to promote exercise and healthy eating, a campaign that required a staff to manage and execute.

Melania Trump said during the campaign that she would fight online bullying.

Melania Trump’s stepdaughter Ivanka joined her father on his trip to Dover Air Force Base, where they were present as the remains of a Navy SEAL killed in a weekend raid in Yemen were returned to the U.S. It was the first time Ivanka Trump, who’s moved with her family to Washington and whose husband, Jared Kushner, is a senior White House adviser, had taken on any of the symbolic duties usually reserved for a president’s spouse.

Ivanka Trump was a vocal presence on the campaign trail and was in the West Wing last weekend as her father made calls. A source close to her says she doesn’t have a desk in the East Wing “for now.”

White House aides have said Melania Trump will move to Washington in the summer, once Barron, the president’s youngest child, finishes the school year in New York.

People in Melania Trump’s Upper East Side set haven’t been surprised to see her take a low-key approach to her new role. “She's sort of like Rapunzel in the tower,” said one New York City socialite who knows Trump from her infrequent appearances on the New York social and charity scene.

Annie Karni contributed to this report.

