Condoleezza Rice is an American diplomat and political scientist who is the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 66th United States secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 and as the 19th U.S. national security advisor from 2001 to 2005. 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. At the time of her appointment as Secretary of State, Rice was the highest-ranking woman in the history of the United States to be in the presidential line of succession.
Official portrait, 2005
Condoleezza Rice during a 2005 interview on ITV in London
Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld listen to President George W. Bush speak about the Middle East on June 24, 2002
President Bush addresses the media at the Pentagon on September 17, 2001
The Hoover Institution is an American public policy think tank which promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and limited government. While the institution is formally a unit of Stanford University, it maintains an independent board of overseers and relies on its own income and donations. It is widely described as conservative, although its directors have contested the idea that it is partisan.
The Hoover Institution in May 2014
Former United States Secretary of Defense Ash Carter speaks about defense innovation at the institution in Washington, D.C. in September 2016
Former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Rex Tillerson during a Hoover forum in January 2018
View of the Hoover Institution's headquarters, including the Hoover Tower, among the Stanford University campus