Irish-born Obama official Samantha Power could be the next U.S. Ambassador to the UN according to the Washington Post.

Current occupant Susan Rice was turned down for the job of Secretary of State but is still expected to move on.

Rice and Power have been influential in shaping Obama’s foreign policy, especially on the issue of the Libya intervention, now looked upon as a success.

Power currently runs the human rights division at the National Security Council and is an expert on genocide.

She was born in Dublin in 1970 but moved to the U.S. at age 9 in 1979. She later went on to Yale and won a Pulitzer Prize for her book on genocide in 2003 entitled “A Problem from Hell,  America and the Age of Genocide."

She was an early convert to the Barack Obama cause and was a senior foreign policy advisor to him. She was forced to resign during his first campaign after she made derogatory remarks about Hillary Clinton.

However she was readmitted to the Obama inner circle soon after he took office and has been a key figure since.

She drew the ire of the Israeli lobby for her alleged sympathies for the Palestinians on the Middle East issue.