Samantha Power appointed as US envoy to UN

United States president Barack Obama yesterday named Dublin-born former White House aide Samantha Poweras the next US ambassador to the United Nations.

Ms Power, a strong human rights advocate, will replace Susan Rice, who will take over as Mr Obama's national security adviser following the decision of Tom Donilon to stand down.

An award-winning author and former journalist, Ms Power was a special assistant to the president and, until earlier this year, senior director of multilateral affairs and human rights at the National Security Council.

She lived in the Dublin suburb of Castleknock until age nine, and emigrated with her family to Pittsburgh in 1979 before moving to Atlanta. She covered the Balkan Wars in the 1990s, filing news reports to the Boston Globe, the Economist and the New Republican.

Her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, won a Pulitzer Price after she graduated from Harvard in 1999, and marked her out as a foreign policy expert.

She played a crucial role in the Obama administration's decision to intervene militarily in Libya in 2011.

She left work in February to spend more time with her children, Declan and Rian. She is married to Cass Sunstein, a former head of the White House’s information and regulatory affairs office.