President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Ambassador Susan Rice to serve as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, the transition team announced Thursday.

In a statement, Rice was framed as a veteran of the executive branch and “among our nation’s most experienced government leaders with the skills to harness the power of the federal government to serve the American people.”

This position does not need Senate confirmation.

Rice was national security adviser under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017 and has known Biden for more than two decades, dating back to her time in the State Department as assistant secretary for African affairs. Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and became chair in 1997. 

This summer, Rice was among the women Biden considered to be his vice presidential running mate before choosing now Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. In a July interview with The 19th, Rice touted her executive experience and her efforts to confront the Ebola crisis — a role that could factor into the Biden administration’s pandemic response when he takes office next month. 

Known more for her extensive foreign policy experience, Rice also pointed to racism as a national security issue, saying, “Our adversaries have figured out that because these divisions exist, all they need to do is pour salt in our wounds, exacerbate those divisions, pit us against each other, and argue both sides of the issue … We’ve got to heal them as a matter of national survival, as a matter of our democratic viability.”