Condoleezza Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States from January 2005 to 2009, pioneering a policy of transformational diplomacy, which focused on supporting democratically-elected countries in the greater Middle East.

In March 2009, Rice returned to Stanford University as a political science professor and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. In September 2010, she became a faculty member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a director of its Global Center for Business and the Economy.

From 1989 through March 1991 (the period of the fall of Berlin Wall and the final days of the Soviet Union), Rice served in President George H.W. Bush's administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In this position, she helped develop Bush's and Secretary of State James Baker's policies in favor of German reunification. On December 17, 2000, she was named as National Security Advisor under George W. Bush serving from January 2001 to 2005.

Rice joined the Stanford University faculty in 1981 and served as its provost from 1993 to 1999. She was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1991 to 1993. As a professor, Rice won two of the highest teaching honors: the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

In Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (October 2010), Rice shares how her upbringing in segregated Birmingham, Alabama—along with her strong, caring family and parents—helped to shape the course of her life. She has also authored and co-authored several other books, including Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995), with Philip Zelikow; The Gorbachev Era (1986), with Alexander Dallin and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984).

In addition to serving on the boards of directors of Chevron, Charles Schwab and Transamerica, Rice was a founding board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund to improve graduation rates for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, CA. She currently serves on the board of the Boys and Girls Club of America and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Rice has been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts, the most notable with PEPFAR (The President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) and in creating and serving on the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Both endeavors increased aid to developing countries and the world's poorest, most disadvantaged populations.

Rice earned her bachelor’s degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.

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