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In President Trump’s White House, a recent highly publicized power struggle has divided the administration into two opposing factions. On the one hand, there’s the camp led by chief strategist Steve Bannon, former editor of the alt-right website Breitbart News. He has influential friends (he is backed by the wealthy Mercer family, heavy Republican donors who also partly own Breitbart), a desire to “deconstruct the administrative state,” and a keen grasp of the populist base on which Trump rose to power. Bannon was once considered one of the closest advisors to President Trump, but according to reports, has recently fallen out of favor. (“I’m my own strategist,” Trump told the New York Post last week.) On the other side, there’s the group led by Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, a senior advisor who, despite a lack of previous government experience, has been tasked with everything from providing a solution to conflicts in the Middle East to criminal justice reform. The Kushners have allied themselves with national economics adviser Gary Cohn, and also with Dina Powell, a former Goldman Sachs employee and advisor to Ivanka who has quickly amassed power and praise within Trump’s administration. For an idea on just how influential Powell has become, look no further than the recent photo the White House released of the president and his closest staff members assembled in a makeshift war room at Mar-a-Lago, while they oversaw a missile strike in Syria. Amongst the many suits, Powell was the only woman in the room.
But who is Dina Powell, and how has she managed to rise to the top of Trump’s administration so quickly? Below, everything you need to know about the White House’s rising star. She initially came into the White House through Ivanka Trump.Ivanka first started working with Powell during the campaign, when she was traveling and meeting women from all over the country. During the transition, Ivanka started to heavily rely on Powell for advice on staffing and how to shape her then-informal role in her father’s future administration. After informally advising Ivanka during the transition, Powell later gained an official White House role as the senior counselor for economic initiatives. Some of the first projects Ivanka and Powell worked on together were the launch of the United States-Canada Council for the Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and holding a listening session on domestic and international human trafficking. She was born in Egypt and is fluent in Arabic.The daughter of an Egyptian Army captain, Powell was born in Cairo and moved to the United States when she was four years old. She grew up in Dallas, but remained fluent in Arabic and later attended the University of Texas, where she showed an early passion for politics with stints working as a legislative assistant to Texas Republican State Senators O.H. Harris and Jerry E. Patterson. Her family identifies as Coptic Christian, the largest religious minority in Egypt, and the subject of a recent terrorist attack in Cairo. She actually has some White House experience.While many of Trump’s advisors are Washington novices, Powell is one of the few that actually has government experience. During George W. Bush’s presidency, Powell served as the assistant to the chief of White House personnel. She was later appointed as assistant secretary of state for education and culture affairs, and traveled to the Middle East with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who has nothing but praise for Powell. “Dina is one of the most capable people I know. She is creative and committed,” Rice told Politico. “She did crucial work for me at the State Department where we were trying to be more effective in outreach to the Muslim world and to empower women. Because of her own background as a woman of Egyptian descent she was a cultural ambassador—absolutely an essential member of my team.” She’s become an important figure in the national security department.Powell’s successful background in international policy is perhaps why she was recently promoted to deputy national security adviser for strategy under national security adviser H.R. McMaster. General McMaster told the AP he hired her “because of her exceptional expertise and leadership skills, to lead an effort to restore the strategic focus of the national security council.” Powell was also invited to attend principal and deputy meetings at the National Security Council, just a few weeks before Bannon was removed from the NSC entirely. Her job at Goldman Sachs wasn’t as anti-populist as you might think.After working for Bush, Powell became a high-ranking employee at Goldman Sachs, that much-maligned investment bank, during the presidential election. In 2010, Powell was made president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, where she was in charge of handling all of the bank’s charitable programs. She’s lauded for starting Goldman’s 10,000 Women initiative, which helps female entrepreneurs in developing countries launch their businesses through funding and advising, and the 10,000 Small Businesses program, which similarly helps emerging business owners in America and the U.K. (It’s not all for charity though. For her role at Goldman, in which she became a partner in 2010, she was reportedly compensated with a 2-million-dollar yearly salary.) She has close relationships on both sides of the aisle.A lifelong Republican, Powell seems to be one of those increasingly rare figures in Washington who have a more centrist approach to politics. She worked for President Bush, but also is good friends with Obama’s former senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett. She’s drawn praise from Ted Cruz on Twitter, but was also once highlighted as a positive figure by Hillary Clinton. Could there really be such a thing as a prepared, experienced, and high-ranking woman working in Trump’s White House? At least for now, Powell seems to be the answer to that question.