Biography
Susan Rice (born 17 November 1964), United Nations Ambassador and foreign policy adviser, studied international relations at Stanford University and the University of Oxford in Oxfordshire.
She served on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council and oversaw African affairs before joining the Brookings Institution.
Susan Rice joined President Barack Obama’s Cabinet in 2009 after being confirmed by the Senate as United Nations ambassador.
She then served as National Security Advisor during President Barack Obama’s second term.
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs of the United States
Susan Rice |
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 Susan Rice: History, Biography, Photos |
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| Full name: | Susan Elizabeth Rice |
| Stage name: | Susan Rice |
| Born: | November 17, 1964 (age 59) |
| Place of birth: | Washington, DC, United States |
| Nationality: | American |
| Height: | 1.62 meters |
| Parents: | Emmett J. Rice, Lois D. Rice |
| Siblings: | John Rice |
| Husband • Spouse: | Ian O. Cameron (married 1992) |
| Boyfriend • Partner: | Do not have |
| The children: | Jake Rice-Cameron, Maris Rice-Cameron |
| Job: | Politician |
| Net worth: | 40 million US dollars |
Early life and education
Susan Elizabeth Rice was born in Washington, DC, on November 17, 1964. She has an older brother named John Rice.
Her family is well-known in Washington’s elite. Her father, Emmett J. Rice, is a Cornell University economics professor and former governor of the Federal Reserve System, and her mother, Lois D. Rice, is an education policy researcher and visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Susan Rice attended National Cathedral School, a preparatory school in Washington, DC. She excelled academically, becoming class valedictorian and showing political acumen as student council president. She also enjoyed sports, participating in three different sports and eventually becoming a star point guard on the basketball team.
After graduating, Susan Rice continued her education at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. She worked hard to succeed in college. Not only did she receive departmental honors and university distinction, but she was also named a Harry S. Truman Scholar, elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.
She angered senior administrators by setting up a fund that would withhold alumni donations until the university stopped investing in South African companies or the country ended apartheid.
Career
After graduating from Oxford, Susan Rice’s first full-time job was as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company in Toronto, where she worked from 1990 to early 1992.
Her public service career began in 1993 when she joined former President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council (NSC). She served as Director of International Organizations and Peacekeeping until 1995, and then as Special Assistant and Senior Director to the President for African Affairs until 1997.
She was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in 1997 and held the position until 2001, making her one of the youngest assistant secretaries in diplomatic history.
Susan Rice’s responsibilities include developing and implementing U.S. policy in 48 sub-Saharan African countries and overseeing the operations of 43 U.S. embassies and 5,000 U.S. national and State Department employees.
During her tenure, she worked on the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement (Congo), the Lomé Peace Agreement (Sierra Leone), and peace negotiations between Ethiopia and Eritrea, leading to the Algiers Agreement of 2000.
That same year, the White House honored her with the Samuel Nelson Drew Memorial Award for her efforts to promote peaceful and cooperative relations between nations.
After a brief stint as executive director and principal at Intellibridge, Susan Rice became a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in 2002.
She studies U.S. foreign policy, weak and failed states, the impact of global poverty, and transnational security threats at the institute, which focuses on independent research and making recommendations to governments.
Several years later, in 2004, she became a foreign policy adviser to John Kerry during his presidential campaign.
She left the Brookings Institution in 2008 to become a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama during his presidential campaign.
After being elected, Barack Obama nominated Susan Rice as United States Ambassador to the United Nations in December 2008, and she was confirmed by the Senate the following January. She was also appointed to the cabinet.
With this appointment, she became the second youngest person and the first African-American woman to represent the United States at the United Nations.
During her tenure, she received praise for her efforts to get the United Nations Security Council to impose tough sanctions on Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs.
She also fights for human rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights and climate change awareness. She played a key role in gaining UN approval for military action in Libya.
Susan Rice stated in September 2012, following the attack on two US facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that the incident was spontaneously inspired by a violent protest in Cairo against a hate video posted on the internet. It was revealed that the attack was carried out by an extremist group.
She was repeatedly criticized for misleading the public; however, no subsequent investigation concluded that she had done so intentionally.
As a result, she withdrew her name from consideration for the position of US Secretary of State.
President Barack Obama appointed her as National Security Advisor in July 2013, a position she held until January 2017.
During her tenure, Susan Rice worked on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Ebola crisis, normalizing relations between Cuba and the United States, fighting the Islamic State and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
After her term ended, she became an honorary visiting fellow at American University’s School of International Service (SIS).
She was appointed as a member of the board of directors of Netflix, an American OTT content platform and production company, in March 2018.
She will join the Biden-Harris Transition Team advisory board in September 2020.
Joe Biden appointed her as the White House’s top domestic policy adviser in December 2020.
Susan Rice has written several books, most recently the memoir Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For, published in 2019. The book was well received and became a New York Times bestseller.
She previously co-edited Confronting Poverty: The weak states and US National Security with former Brookings colleagues Corinne Graff and Carlos Pascual in 2010.
She also co-authored The State Fragility Index in the Developing World (2008) with Stewart Patrick and Poverty and Civil War: What Policymakers Need to Know (2006) with Corinne Graff and Janet Lewis.
Personal life
Susan Rice married Ian O. Cameron in 1992. They have two children together; a son named Jake Rice-Cameron and a daughter named Maris Rice-Cameron.
Susan Rice and her husband, Ian O. Cameron, currently live in Washington, DC, with their two children.
Net worth
Susan Rice has a net worth of $40 million. This estimate is based on calculations of her wealth, including assets, income, and investments.
She has amassed a considerable fortune through more than 20 years of diplomatic service, with her main source of income coming from diplomatic work.
Social media
- Twitter: @AmbassadorRice
- Instagram: @ambsusanrice
