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Women of the Week

Condoleezza “Condi” Rice was born on November 14, 1954, and is the only child of Angelena and John Rice Jr. Throughout her childhood she participated in several different activities like piano, figure skating, music classes, and she even learned how to speak French fluently. 

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Her family moved to Denver, Colorado, where she attended an all girl Catholic high school and later graduated at the age of 16. 

Rice enrolled to the University of Denver where her father was then serving as an assistant dean. She initially majored in music and later attended the Aspen Music Festival and School where she studied to become a professional pianist but she began to consider an alternative major, International Politics. 

After having the title of numerous political roles throughout her career, Rice became known as an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush.

Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state, as well as the second African American secretary of state and the second female secretary of state. She was President Bush’s National Security Advisor during his first term, making her the first woman to serve in that position. 

Before joining the Bush administration, she was a professor of political science at Stanford University where she served as Provost from 1993 to 1999. 

Rice also served on the National Security Council as the Soviet and Eastern Europe Affairs Advisor to President George H.W. Bush during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification. 

Rice is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded eleven honorary doctorates.  She currently resides in Stanford, California.

 

 

First Lady Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is a lawyer, writer and the wife of the 44th and current president, Barack Obama. She is the first African-American First Lady of the United States.    

First Lady Michelle Obama

First Lady Michelle Obama

Through her four main initiatives, she has become a role model for women and an advocate for healthy families, service members and their families, higher education, and international adolescent girls education.

Obama was born in January 17, 1964, in DeYoung, Illinois, to Fraser Robinson III and Marian Robinson, and grew up in Chicago’s South Shore community, where her parents rented a small apartment in her great-aunt’s two-story apartment. 

All throughout her early childhood career, she was gifted. She skipped the second grade and was enrolled in a gifted class when she was in the sixth grade. 

Despite all of the disbelievers in her life, she applied and was accepted into Princeton University. She then furthered her education and went on to Harvard Law School, where she received her Juris Doctor and continued to write books. 

She met Barack Obama simply because they were among the few Blacks at their law firm. After dating for a while they married in October 1992 and became the parents of two daughters.  

After her husband won the Presidential Election in August 2008, she visited multiple homeless shelters, women’s homes and soup kitchens.