Dina Powell

Dina Powell, also known as Dina Powell McCormick (née Habib, دينا حبيب; born June 12, 1973) is an American financial executive, philanthropist, and political advisor, best known for having been the United States Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy to President Donald Trump.

Born in Cairo, Egypt, she came to the United States as a child.

A lifelong member of the Republican Party, she became involved in Texas-oriented Republican politics during and following her time at the University of Texas at Austin.

During the George W. Bush administration, Powell served in several roles, first as an Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel and then as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs and Deputy Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy.

She attended the prep school for girls Ursuline Academy of Dallas, from which she was graduated in 1991.

She then attended the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts where she enrolled in the Plan I Honors program.

She performed community service as part of her program and joined the Delta Delta Delta sorority.

Habib helped pay for school by working as a legislative assistant for two Republican members of the Texas State Senate: Ike Harris and Jerry E. Patterson.

With them, she worked on a number of policy matters, including juvenile justice reform.

Her family strongly identified with the Republican Party and greatly admired Ronald Reagan.

She adopted the same views, later recalling that "... when I started to work with Republicans I realised that I agree with the views of personal empowerment, of less government involvement, of having the ability to talk about things without the government necessarily being involved. And on the economic side I'm definitely a believer that people should spend more of their money and spend it the way they think so and invest it wisely."

For her honors thesis, she wrote about the value of mentoring juvenile delinquents.

She graduated from the University of Texas with honors with a bachelor's degree in humanities from its College of Liberal Arts in 1995.

Habib had applied to, and had been accepted by, a law school.

However, in part due to her Arabic fluency,

she received an offer of a year-long internship with the U.S. Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison.

She deferred the school and accepted the internship, moving to Washington, D.C. in the process.

She never returned to law school.

After the year-long internship concluded, she took a job with Dick Armey, the Republican Majority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives.

There, she worked as a member of his leadership staff.

This role lasted four years.

In 2007, Powell joined Goldman Sachs, where she became a managing director and eventually a partner at the firm, as well as president of its non-profit subsidiary, the Goldman Sachs Foundation.

In that capacity she ran the foundation's 10,000 Women program.

Powell joined the Trump administration during the transition period and remained thereafter.

As a Deputy National Security Advisor she had a role in determining the first year of the administration's foreign policy, especially in regard to Middle East policy.

She was also an Assistant to the President and Senior Counselor for Economic Initiatives, a position – demanding about 20 percent of her time – that continued after her security appointment.

She left the administration in early 2018, returning to work for Goldman Sachs, where she was a Partner and served on the Management Committee.

In October 2018, Powell was a leading candidate for the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations, but withdrew from consideration and remained with the financial firm.

In 2022 she was named the new chair of the Robin Hood Foundation, to begin in 2023.

Powell departed Goldman Sachs in 2023 to join BDT & MSD Partners.

Dina Habib was born in Cairo, Egypt to a middle-class, Coptic Christian family.

Her father was a captain in the Egyptian Army, and her mother had attended American University in Cairo.

Her parents brought her younger sister and her to the United States as children.

Habib arrived knowing no English.

The Habib family settled in Dallas, Texas, where they had relatives within the Coptic community.

The parents ran a convenience store, and her father also worked at times as a bus driver and in real estate, while her mother sometimes pursued a career in social work.

A third daughter was born once the family was in North America.

Habib learned English at school, but her family insisted that she be raised with Egyptian culture and language, hence, she is fluent in Arabic.

Of her parents' actions, she later said, "I so desperately wanted a turkey and cheese sandwich with potato chips, and instead I always got grape leaves and hummus and falafel, not even in a cool brown paper bag. And now, of course, I appreciate so much that I did."

Each of the family members born abroad became a naturalized citizen of the United States.