PORTLAND (AP) – The name of President-elect Barack Obama’s selection for United Nations ambassador will have a familiar ring to many people in Maine.

Susan Rice, a foreign policy expert who served as an adviser to Obama’s campaign, is the daughter of Lois Dickson Rice, a Maine native who grew up in a prominent Portland family.

The family has a summer home in Lincolnville and Rice is a frequent visitor.

Rice was in Portland in January, when she was keynote speaker at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast Celebration.

“Anyone from Maine should be proud because she has such strong Maine roots,” said Rachel Talbot Ross, president of the Portland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which hosted the breakfast. “She represents the ideal that, as her mother once told her, ‘No dream is too bold to embrace.”‘

Rice, who’s 44, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

She also served previously as an assistant secretary of state and worked for the National Security Council. In 2004, she served as senior national security adviser for the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

She has a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University, and a master’s degree and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University, which she attended on a Rhodes Scholarship.

Her father is Emmett J. Rice, a retired senior vice president at the National Bank of Washington and a former governor of the Federal Reserve. Her husband, Ian Cameron, is executive producer of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” They have two children.

During her speech in Portland, Susan Rice recalled that her grandparents David and Mary Dickson, Jamaican immigrants who settled in Portland, taught their children to strive for excellence and “never let race be an obstacle or an excuse.”

The Dicksons had five children and Rice’s mother, the youngest, was valedictorian at Portland High School in 1950 and class president of Radcliffe College in 1954. She later received honorary doctorates from Bowdoin College and Brown University.

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, http://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-12-02-08 1326EST

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