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Rice, who is single, works 14-hour days, and since 9/11 no member of President Bush's team has spent more time consulting him on foreign policy issues. She is a key strategist in the campaign against terrorism. According to Businessweek, she is probably the most influential national security adviser since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.

She has been active in helping the president devise a strategy for brokering peace between Israel and Palestine. And she recently displayed grace under attack as she weathered the barrage of media interrogations following revelations that perhaps the White House didn't act on early warnings about the September 11 attacks. "There was no specific time, place, or method mentioned," she calmly told reporters.

It wasn't the first time Rice has been embroiled in public controversy. As provost of Stanford University, over the vocal opposition of many faculty and students, Rice navigated difficult fiscal waters. She chopped tens of millions of dollars from Stanford's debt-ridden budget and saw the school emerge two years later with balanced books and the promise of a fresh infusion of funding from impressed benefactors. Though her hardnosed decisions won her plenty of enemies, she also gained the respect and affection of many and proved herself to be a rock-solid manager as well as a vigorous scholar. "Condi was not running any popularity contest," Stanford political science professor and Rice's longtime friend Coit Blacker told The Washington Post after her appointment as national security adviser. "She was effective as provost because of her ability to make tough decisions and stick to them even if they made people unhappy."

Daniel Clendenin, another Rice acquaintance, who heads the graduate staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Stanford, says he admires Rice's courage and faith. "She is a woman of prayer," he says.

Condoleezza Rice ("Condi" to those who know her well) was born on November 14, 1954, in Birmingham, Alabama. The Alabama of Rice's childhood was a strange world of legislated racism, where often the first words that black children learned to read were on the signs above water fountains and on restroom doors: COLORED ONLY.

Her devoted parents—Angelena, who taught music and science at an all-black high school, and John, who pastored Birmingham's Westminster Presbyterian Church, was dean of the historically black Stillman College, and later the vice chancellor of the University of Denver—saw to it that their daughter had the best things in life. Though not without struggle, they gave her a rare family pedigree, a devout faith, and a strong sense of self-worth.

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