Sunday, May 12, 2013

Condoleezza Rice: 'Find Something You Love' - WSJ.com

Condoleezza Rice: 'Find Something You Love' - WSJ.com:

Condoleezza Rice: 'Find Something You Love'

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice On Finding Her Passion and Following It.

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By RUTH MANTELL

As her tenure as Secretary of State draws to a close, Condoleezza Rice took time out of her day to talk to The Wall Street Journal about finding her path in life and her experiences as a female secretary of state. Edited excerpts from the conversation follow.
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[Condoleezza Rice]Dennis Cook/Associated Press
Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice was sworn in on Capitol Hill Jan. 18, 2005, prior to testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on her nomination.
WSJ: What was the key turning point, career move or life event that got you to where you are today?
Ms. Rice: From my point of view, finding what I was passionate about was the key for me. And I thought that passion was concert piano. After a kind of serious look at my prospects, I found, fortunately, a course on international politics taught by a Soviet specialist.
When you are searching for your passion you can't let it be limited by what others think you ought to do. There is no earthly reason that a black girl from Birmingham, Ala., would want to study Russian. And yet that's what really was fulfilling for me and what I was passionate about. And so I think that decision obviously was a very critical one.
But I would not have been in a position to do that without extraordinary parents. I'm often asked: 'Have you made sacrifices? Have you had to make tough choices?' And, of course we all do, but nothing compared to the choices that my parents made to give me every opportunity that they possibly could even though they were teachers, educators who made very little money. So I would say it's not so much things that I did, but I really was set up for it by great parents.
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Because I really didn't have a 'plan,' I was fortunate that certain circumstances arose, allowing me to get here. But I think I prepared for it by finding something I loved and working hard at it. I think sometimes women believe there is something wrong with networking and getting to know people. Of course you need to get to know people.
WSJ: When traveling in your official capacity, how are you treated globally? Are there places that you go to where official negotiations are complicated by local attitudes towards women?
Ms. Rice: You almost become secretary of state, and that is without gender. But of course there are places where attitudes towards women, particularly in the Middle East, are not always very enlightened. It doesn't tend to affect me because I'm being dealt with as secretary of state.

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But I'll tell you a way that I think it's actually been positive. I can't tell you how many places, conservative Muslim states, where a leader or one of the ministers will say: 'My daughter follows what you do, would you send her a note,' or in a couple of cases where people have actually brought their daughters or wives to meet me. I always find that really gratifying because it means that perhaps these leaders or ministers who are in very conservative societies still hope for something different for their daughters.
WSJ: What piece of advice do you have for young women today who want to advance far in politics?
Ms. Rice: Find something you love to do and don't spend time thinking about whether or not it's going to advance you in politics. If you don't love what you do and you're not passionate about what you do, you are not going to advance very far.
The second thing is to not to try to plan too far ahead. There are so many variables in life that you may or may not ever get there. It's not that you can be aimless and unfocused, but I always say plan for the next thing that you want to do, and plan and do it well. And concentrate on doing that well and enjoying it and seeing where it leads you, rather than trying to think four, five steps ahead, which is almost never going to work.
WSJ: You are the first black woman to serve as secretary of state. What sorts of new perspectives do you bring to State Department decisions?
Ms. Rice: I don't think my decision making is different because I'm black and female, although I'm a package. I'm 5-foot-8, I'm a woman, a minority. You can't disentangle those and say well, what if I were a 5-foot-7 white male. It's all integral to who I am. So it's very hard to know how it does and does not affect my decision making.
But it does make me more aware of a couple of things. The first is the absolute necessity of America having a diplomatic corps that is as multiethnic and as multireligious as the United States itself is. Because what kind of message are we sending if the Foreign Service doesn't look like America?
And so I've been very active in trying to improve the access of minorities to the Foreign Service and the outreach of the Foreign Service to minorities. I'm a great believer that there are a lot people out there who could serve in the Foreign Service, but perhaps they are not in the usual networks that you find those people in. I've said on occasion that I can go a whole day, maybe sometimes several days, and never see somebody who looks like me, and that's not good.
The second thing is I think I've been able to bring some perspective of America's long journey for a multiethnic democracy that works. From the time of our founding, where we clearly had a birth defect called slavery, to now when you've had two African American secretaries of state and one white woman. And I can bring that perspective to struggling democracies or to places where multiethnic democracy isn't really working, or places where racial issues have been sort of pushed under the rug.
Write to Ruth Mantell at ruth.mantell@dowjones.com

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