Born Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)
Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as secretary of state (1997–2001), may be best remembered as a quick-witted advocate for human rights and American global interests. A child of Czech refugees, Albright earned a PhD in public law and government in 1976 from Columbia University. She then taught at Georgetown University until 1993, when President Bill Clinton appointed her ambassador to the United Nations (UN).
Albright’s work at the UN helped her garner unanimous Senate support for her nomination as secretary of state. “I will do my best to talk about foreign policy not in abstract terms, but in human terms and bipartisan terms,” she promised. During her tenure as secretary of state, Albright advocated for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to intervene in Yugoslavia in order to stop the ethnic cleansing of Albanians. She also supported NATO’s expansion and attempted to secure a diplomatic agreement with North Korea.
Albright, who authored bestselling books and foreign policy texts, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. She received a Portrait of a Nation Prize from the National Portrait Gallery in 2017.
