Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival presents an evening with Ambassador Susan Rice, recalling pivotal moments from her dynamic career on the front lines of American diplomacy and foreign policy. Ambassador Rice will be in conversation with Jeh Johnson, former Secretary of Homeland Security.

In Tough Love, Susan E. Rice—National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations—reveals her surprising story with unflinching candor. Mother, wife, scholar, diplomat, and fierce champion of American interests and values, Rice powerfully connects the personal and the professional. Intimate, sometimes humorous, but always candid, Tough Love makes an urgent appeal to the American public to bridge our dangerous domestic divides in order to preserve our democracy and sustain our global leadership.

Tickets ($40) include a copy of Tough Love. The talk will take place from 7-8pm.

The VIP admission ($100) includes a pre-event cocktail party (6-7pm), free parking at the Red Hawk parking deck, priority entry and reserved seating.

“In ‘Tough Love’, Susan Rice provides a compelling look at what it is really like to work in the inner sanctums of the White House and what it really means to walk the corridors of power….Reading ‘Tough Love’ is like taking a master class in how to be a powerful woman. It is also a classic American tale, relatable to anyone who has ever dreamed of success. I was riveted from the first page of ‘Tough Love’ to the last.” —Shonda Rhimes

Ambassador Susan E. Rice is currently Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the School of International Service at American University, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She serves on the boards of Netflix and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and previously served on several nonprofit boards, including the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

Jeh Johnson is a lawyer and former government official who served as the fourth United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017. He previously was the General Counsel of the Department of Defense from 2009 to 2012 during the first years of the Obama Administration. He is currently a partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and a board of directors member at Lockheed Martin Corporation.

This event is part of Succeed2gether’s fourth annual Montclair Literary Festival, which will take place from March 25 to 29, 2020. Please visit succeed2gether.org/montclair-literary-festival/ for more details of the program, which will feature more than 100 authors. The festival is a fundraiser for Montclair-based non-profit Succeed2gether, which offers after-school one-on-one tutoring and enrichment classes with the aim of closing the education opportunity gap in Essex County.

The festival organizing committee wishes to thank event partners Succeed2gether staff, Montclair Public Library, First Congregational Church, and Watchung Booksellers, and festival sponsors Rao’s, Montclair State University, West of Hudson Realty Group, and community members.