‘Don’t take crap off of people’, was the advice Susan Rice’s father gave her when she was a kid. At 55, Stanford and Oxford-educated Rice, who is among the top contenders to be the running mate of presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden, has remembered this advice every single day of her  life.

Born in 1964 to Emmett J. Rice, senior VP at the National Bank of Washington and Lois Dickson Rice, senior VP for a government department, Rice says she has had to work very hard to reach where she is now and following her father’s mantra has had a lot to do with how she navigated the world and its challenges.

“As an African American, born in 60s and raised in 70s I had to be  twice as good to be viewed half as good in comparison to my peers… I worked very hard,” says Rice, former National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama and US ambassador to the United Nations, in an interview to a TV channel.

“My parents taught me that we were blesed, my parents had come from very little means but made the most of the educational  opporunities given to them,’ says the career diplomat whose great-grandfather was  born a slave but rose to establish a school in New Jersey and educated generations of African Americans.

Nicknamed Spo (short for Sportin’) at the elite girls’ school she went to, Rice was noticed in Stanford for her political activism.

Having worked with two Presidents, Obama and Bill Clinton, Rice is said to have all the necessary credentials to be the running mate of Biden. She and Senator Kamala Harris have emerged as the top contenders for the post of the vice-president of the US. During her stint at the UN, Rice worked closely with Biden and the two are understood to share a good rapport.

Whoever makes it, will make history too by being the first Black woman to be a running mate. Biden is also considering Representative Karen Bass of California, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Representative  Val Demings of Florida, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

Rice, no relation to former Secretary of State Condolezza RIce, grew up in Washington and was an assistant Secretary of State at 32. “I was the youngest at that time, I had people reporting to me who were 20 to 30 years senior to me, mostly men, mostly white…I had to figure out how to be persistent.. worked very hard to have a vision.” says RIce.

Given that her childhood training was not to ‘take crap off of people’, Rice often invited adjectives such as ‘brilliant’ but also ‘authoritarian’ and ‘brash’ when she was working with Clinton’s Wite House. The New York Times wrote, she acknowledges ‘a certain impatience at times.’ She was also severly criticised for the ‘way she handled’ the 2012 Bengazhi attack that left four American dead.

Rice said the attack was the result of spontaneous protests in response to an anti-Muslim YouTube video, which was later found not to be the case. The Opposition said that Rice had intentionally misled the public. However, the House Intelligence Committee later concluded that she had not

Rice, a protege of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, is married to Canadian-born former ABC news executive producer Ian Officer Camero, whom she met in Stanford and they have two children: a daughter and son

If she is projected as the VP choice by Biden, one thing that will certainly travel with her during all campaigns will be her tough image.  In her memoir released last year, Obama’s second UN ambassador, Samantha Power, wrote, “Susan was said to have a ‘black belt’ in bureaucracy,” and recounted early advice from her: “Act like you are the boss, or people will take advantage of you,” reports the atlantic.com.

This tough image of Rice also transported itself to her book called ‘Tough Love .. My story of the things worth fighting for’– which she explains is about ‘Loving fiercely but not uncritically’.

Though a czarina of foreign affairs, her complete lack of experience in running internal affairs may go against her in this time of rising unemployment and the miseries brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, say analysts.