Rice became the first black woman secretary of state & with it "America's face to the world".
Condi loves sports, her lifelong ambition being to become the commissioner of the National Football League.
Such is her value that the early-to-bed, no-partying Bush turned up at her surprise 50th party organised by teh British ambassador. Since she didn't know & wasn't prepared, a red Oscar de la Renta gown awaited her to slip into. Very few women can boast of such treatment from the creamiest layet of Washington's elite male club.
She is a concert pianist & a competitive ice-skater. She has played with Yo Yo Ma & her favourite composer is Brahms. She practises with her chamber music group & often performs for friends.
Condoleezza Rice Detailed Biography
Condoleezza Rice is the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Currently on leave from the Hoover Institution, Condoleezza Rice is the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, a post she was appointed to by President George W. Bush in December 2000.She previously served as a Hoover senior fellow from 1991 until 1993, when she was appointed provost of Stanford University. Rice held the position of provost for six years, during which time she served as the chief academic and budget officer of the university, before stepping down on July 1, 1999. She is on a one-year leave of absence from the university. Rice first came to Stanford in 1981 as a fellow in the arms control and disarmament program. She is a tenured professor in the university's political science department and was a Hoover Institution national fellow from 1985 until 1986. Following her initial Hoover Institution affiliation, Rice went to Washington, D.C. to work on nuclear strategic planning at the Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship. She came back to Stanford when the fellowship ended. Rice returned to Washington in 1989 when she was director of Soviet and East European affairs with the National Security Council. She also was appointed special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Soviet affairs at the National Security Council under President George Bush. In those roles, she helped bring democratic reforms to Poland, and played a vital role in crafting many of the Bush administration's policies with the former Soviet Union. Rice's professional activities since returning to Stanford have not been limited to the university. She confounded the Center for a New Generation, an after-school academy in East Palo Alto, California, and is a corporate board member for Chevron, the Hewlett Foundation, and Charles Schwab. In addition, Rice is a member of J.P. Morgan's international advisory council. Rice is a Council of Foreign Relations member, a National Endowment for the Humanities trustee, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has written numerous articles and several books on international relations and foreign affairs, including Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft, with Philip Zelikow (Harvard University Press, 1995). Rice enrolled at the University of Denver at the age of 15, graduating at 19 with a bachelor's degree in political science (cum laude). She earned a master's degree at the University of Notre Dame and a doctorate from the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies. Both of her advanced degrees are also in political science. Condoleezza Rice is the first black female to be appointed as US secretary of state. She was also the first to occupy the key post of national security adviser. She is the most academic member of the Bush foreign affairs team and - because of her gender, background and youth - one of the most distinctive. Personally close to Mr. Bush, she spends almost every weekend with the president and his wife Laura at Camp David. She has been one of his key supporters during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the continuing war against terror.Despite a somewhat stern demeanour, which has earned her the nickname "warrior princess", Ms Rice has consistently been one of the most popular members of the Bush administration and a proven ally for a president who came to office with little experience of foreign affairs. Ms Rice was born in 1954 and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama under the shadow of segregation. Racism was so ingrained in her childhood that she says she hardly noticed it. When she was just eight years old, Ms Rice was standing inside her father's church when she felt the floor shake. A Ku Klux Klan bomb had exploded at a Baptist Church two blocks away, killing four young black girls, one of them her classmate since kindergarten. She has often said that to get ahead, she had to be "twice as good", and her childhood chiselled her strong determination and self-respect. Ms Rice's mother was a music teacher who taught her to play the piano. Her father was a pastor and college principal, who shared his enthusiasm for sport with his daughter. In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Ms Rice said that despite growing up with racial segregation, personal expectations were high. "My parents had me absolutely convinced that, well, you may not be able to have a hamburger at Woolworth's but you can be president of the United States," she said. Her parents taught her that education was the best armour against segregation and prejudice. Regarded as one of America's brightest and best, Ms Rice went to the University of Denver at 15 and graduated with a degree in political science at the still tender age of 19. A concert level pianist, she had originally enrolled as a music student, with the intention of becoming a classical pianist. But while at Denver she came under the influence of Josef Korbel, a Czech refugee and father to the US' first woman secretary of state, Madeleine Albright. Under his guidance, she became interested in international relations and the study of the Soviet Union and switched courses. A masters and doctorate followed and, at the age of 26, Ms Rice became a fellow at Stanford University's Centre for International Security and Arms Control. After serving as the Soviet affairs adviser on Bush senior's National Security Council, Condoleezza Rice returned to Stanford in 1991 and, in 1993, became the youngest, the first female and first non-white provost. When the Bush administration came to power, her influence over early foreign policy strategy was considerable. She led the tricky negotiations with Russia over missile defence, and is thought to have spearheaded the unilateralist tone of the first months of the Bush presidency. But it was in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks in Washington and New York that she really proved her strength, standing staunchly by the president during the difficult days ahead and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She is thought to be one of the most significant creators of the controversial Bush doctrine of pre-emptive action against states thought to be a threat against the US. "The United States has always reserved the right to try and diminish or to try to eliminate a threat before it is attacked," she stated firmly in an interview shortly before the war in Iraq. But controversial as this view may be it has done nothing to diminish her popularity, both inside and outside the White House. In fact, her steely determination in these times of conflict may serve her well as she prepares to take up the post of secretary of state.
