Susan E. Rice

Susan E. Rice is currently a distinguished visiting research fellow at the American University School of International Service and a non-resident senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Previously, she served President Barack Obama as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013. From 2013 to 2017, she led the National Security Council Staff of approximately 400 defense, diplomatic, intelligence, and development experts as national security advisor in the Obama administration.

From 2002 to 2008, Rice was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she conducted research and published widely on U.S. foreign policy, transnational security threats, weak states, global poverty, and development. .

As U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997 to 2001, Rice formulated and implemented U.S. policy toward 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. She was responsible for the management of 43 U.S. embassies and more than 5,000 U.S. and foreign service national employees.

From 1993 to 1997, Rice served as special assistant to the president and senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House, as well as director for international organizations and peacekeeping on the National Security Council staff. 

Rice has previously served on numerous boards, including as an outside director of the Bureau of National Affairs (now Bloomberg BNA), as well as Common Sense Media, the Beauvoir School in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. She is currently on the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Rice received her master’s degree and Ph.D. in international relations from New College, Oxford University, England, where she was a Rhodes Scholar and her B.A. in history, with honors, from Stanford University, where she was a Phi Beta Kappa and a Truman Scholar.  A native of Washington, D.C., Rice is married to Ian Cameron, and they have two children. 

The inaugural Common Ground program at Hamilton took place in October 2017 and featured political strategists David Axelrod and Karl Rove. USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page served as moderator.