President Obama will nominate former journalist Dublin-born Samantha Power (47) to replace Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Samantha PowerPower launched a 22-year reporting career as a freelancer in Bosnia in the 1990s during the Balkans crisis. Her reporting and commentary blistered the Clinton administration for its reluctance to bomb Serbia, a policy that it ultimately pursued.

The Boston Globe, Washington Post, The Economist and U.S. & World Report published Power's work, which led to a New Republic "Postcards" column of her dispatches from Sarajevo and Zagreb.

She became a policy analyst at the International Crisis Group and Pulitzer Prize-winner for "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," a book that advocates muscular military responses to genocide.

From 1998 to 2002, Power was founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

In 2005, she joined then-Sen. Obama's office as a foreign policy advisor and became his chief international counsel during the '08 presidential run.

She resigned the campaign after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster," a characterization Power made during in what she thought was an "off-the-record" interview.

Power rejoined Obama in the White House, serving as special assistant on the National Security Council and director of the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights until February.

She was among Obama's advisors to urge U.S. military intervention in Libya.