Condoleezza "Condi" Rice is an American diplomat, political scientist, civil servant, and professor who is the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Rice served as the 66th United States secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 and as the 20th national security advisor from 2001 to 2005. A member of the Republican Party, Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state and the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor. Until the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, were the highest-ranking African Americans in the history of the federal executive branch.
Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up while the South was racially segregated. She obtained her bachelor's degree from the University of Denver and her master's degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame. In 1981, she received a PhD from the School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She worked at the State Department under the Carter administration and served on the National Security Council as the Soviet and Eastern Europe Affairs Advisor to President George H. W.