She is national security adviser to President Bush. The first woman and first African-American to hold the job, she coordinates the National Security Council (NSC), which serves as the White House's in-house advisory board on foreign policy.
A longtime "Bushie," Condoleezza Rice has genuine clout within the administration when it comes to foreign policy decisions. She was the president's top adviser on overseas issues during the 2000 campaign. From 1989 to 1991, she served as a staff member at the NSC, advising the first President Bush on Russian and European affairs.
In her current role, Rice meets with the president daily to brief him on the latest foreign developments and on developing issues on the horizon. She also tracks efforts of other government agencies that have representatives on the NSC. Fellow NSC members include Secretary of State Colin Powell (see "Who Is Colin Powell?"), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (see "Who Is Donald Rumsfeld?") and Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, along with the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Throughout the crisis since September 11, Rice has counseled the president on how he should frame American policy through his public statements. She has also, at times, taken the lead herself, serving as the Bush Administration's spokesperson as events have unfolded.
Before September 11, Rice was one of the administration's staunchest supporters of some of its least popular foreign initiatives. She counseled the president to support funding of a missile defense shield, which domestic opponents claim is unfeasible and foreign governments claim violates existing disarmament treaties. She also suggested publicly that the U.S. should reduce its current troop levels in Bosnia and Kosovo, moves that our western European allies strongly oppose.
During the years between the two Bush presidencies, Rice returned to Stanford University, where she had previously been a professor of political science, to serve as university provost. In that role, she oversaw budget and academic issues while continuing to teach foreign policy.
From an early age, Rice was identified as a prodigy. She started college at age 15 and graduated by 19. She is also a virtuoso classical pianist. Her name is based on an Italian musical term that means "with sweetness."
A daughter of the segregated South, Rice came face to face with discrimination at an early age. Racism was, she told The Washington Post recently, "so there - there all the time - that you ceased to notice its existence." In 1963, one of her childhood friends was killed in Birmingham, Alabama, when the Ku Klux Klan fire-bombed her church.
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