Ms. Manuel is Co-Founder and Partner along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, a strategic consulting firm that helps US companies navigate international markets since 2009. From 2005-2007, she served as an official at the U.S. Department of State, responsible for South Asia Policy. Earlier in her career, Ms. Manuel was an attorney at WilmerHale working on corporate governance, international and Supreme Court cases, and represented special committees of major corporate boards before the US Congress, Department of Justice and the SEC. She was also an investment banker at Salomon Brothers in London. She currently serves on two corporate boards: Overseas Shipping Group, Inc., a NYSE listed energy transportation company (risk committee chair, and audit comm. member), and Ripple Labs Inc., a leading blockchain payments company (governance committee). Manuel also serves on advisory boards of Flexport Inc., Synapse Inc., Center for a New American Security, and the boards of the American Ditchley Foundation, Natl. Comm. on US-China Relations, and Governor Brown's California Export Council. She is the Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum -- the premier bi-partisan forum on foreign policy in the U.S. -- and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and holds BA and MA degrees with distinction from Stanford University, where she now lectures.