Nimrata Nikki Randhawa was born January 20, 1972, the third of four children of a Sikh family living in rural central South Carolina.

She went to Clemson University in Clemson, S.C., on a scholarship to study textile management. She graduated in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting.

Her parents wanted her to marry someone from the same background and with the same religion. Michael Haley proposed to her in Clemson’s botanical gardens in 1994. “Just not acceptable,” said her mother. Her parents, according to her, said to Michael, “Michael, you’re a good boy. If you really want to marry our daughter, you have to get a job, you have to buy a house, you have to buy a car, and you can’t see her or have any communication with her for a year. If you can do all these things, you can marry her.” She and Michael dated for another two years before she told her parents, “If you think you can find me someone who will love me more than him and who will take care of me better than him, then I will listen to you.” They were married in 1996 — first in a service in a Sikh gurdwara in Columbia, then a month later in a ceremony in St. Andrew By-The-Sea United Methodist Church on Hilton Head Island. She converted that year to Christianity. “We chose Christianity,” she has said, “because of the way we wanted to live our life and raise our children.”

In 2015, in the aftermath of Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine Black people in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, she insisted the Confederate flag be removed from a monument honoring CSA soldiers in front of the capitol. It helped put her on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. “Nikki Haley led with determination, grace and compassion,” wrote Lindsey Graham, who added that she had “put a face on South Carolina that we were all extremely proud of.”

In 2020, after a police officer killed George Floyd, she said it “needs to be personal and painful for everyone.” Tucker Carlson objected. “Why is some politician telling me I’m required to be upset about it?” he said. “What Nikki Haley does best is moral blackmail.”

She said she would not run for president if Trump ran again for president. “I would not run,” she said, “if President Trump ran.”

When she was asked a couple years ago if she thought she could do the job of president, she didn’t hesitate with her answer. “Of course,” she said.

Even if Haley does field attacks on the Confederate flag, others say they are unlikely to erode her support. “There’s a pocket of Trump’s base who probably still love the flag,” Stroman says. “But those people were not going to vote for Nikki Haley anyway.”