Madeline Albright, the United States’ first female secretary of state, has solidified her place in history through her intellect, resilience, and passion. Born on May 15, 1937 in Prague as Marie Jana Körbel to Josef and Anna Körbel, she inherited the moniker “Madeleine” through familial nicknames and her studies of the French language. As a toddler, she and her family fled their native Czechoslovakia after the Nazis invaded the country at the start of World War II. Once in England, the family dropped the umlaut in Körbel and settled into Western European life. Albright was raised Catholic. However, she later learned that her parents had actually converted to the Christian faith from Judaism following the outbreak of the war, and three of her grandparents died in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Once the war came to a close, the Korbels resettled in Czechoslovakia in 1948. This resettlement was short-lived, however, due to the communists rise to power. This time, her family moved to the United States of America. The Korbels settled in Denver, Colorado; Albright’s father, Josef, had credentials as a journalist and diplomat, and he became a distinguished professor at the University of Denver. Josef Korbel greatly influenced his daughter’s awareness of and appreciation for global affairs. In fact, he also impacted another future secretary of state: his former student Condoleezza Rice.
As a child, Albright was eager and curious. Her studiousness and natural affinity for learning earned her a scholarship to the distinguished Wellesley College in Massachusetts. At Wellesley, Albright became editor of the school newspaper and pursued her interest in politics through various organizations on campus. She took on a summer internship at the Denver Post, an internship that opened doors for her both professionally and socially. At the Post, she met Joseph Albright. He came from a family of publishers and politicians: his grandfather founded the New York Daily News, his great-great grandfather had owned the Chicago Tribune and was elected mayor of Chicago, and his aunt founded Newsday.
Albright graduated with honors from Wellesley in 1959. Following her graduation, she married Joseph. Joseph was pursuing a career in journalism, so the couple moved around often to various cities over the next few years. At this time, Albright raised their three young daughters, twins Alice and Anne, born in 1961, and Katherine, born in 1967. Albright was already fluent in English, Czech, and French (which she had learned as a child). During this period of re-location, she decided to study Russian, and she also began to study international relations, the subject that her father had first keened her senses on. Albright went on to complete her education at Columbia University. She earned her certificate in Russian studies in 1968 and her MA and PhD in public law and government in 1976.
Albright’s years at Columbia were integral to the decisions she made for her future. While still a student, she entered the political arena as a legislative assistant to Democratic senator Edmund Muskie in 1972. Four years later, upon her graduation from Columbia, national security advisor and Albright’s former teacher Zbigniew Brzezinski hired her to work for the National Security Council under the administration of President Jimmy Carter. However, the Democrats fell from power in 1980 with the election of President Ronald Reagan. Albright moved away form government work and instead turned to the private sector. She worked for various Washington nonprofits, ultimately becoming a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University. Albright’s energy was infectious—she was knowledgeable and passionate, and her students recognized that. She also used her experiences as a woman who ran in circles that were often dominated by men to teach her own students. Albright encouraged them to speak up and interrupt if they had a point to make, recalling the many instances when a man had echoed her own ideas in a voice that was merely louder and more confident-sounding. She went on to win Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service’s Teacher of the Year award four times.
As Albright enjoyed fulfillment and success in her professional life, her personal life was at risk. Her happiness was met with heartbreaking news. In 1982, Madeleine and Joseph divorced. He had fallen out of love with Madeleine and in love with Marcia Kunstel, a fellow journalist and author. Her dissolving marriage caused her to second-guess herself. Albright found it increasingly difficult to preach fortitude and confidence to her students because she felt that the failure of her marriage meant that she had failed at life. Still, she was devastated but determined. She explains, “I did not want to become cynical or stoical or hard-bitten, or to stop wondering whether what I was doing would please somebody else.”
And so she persevered, continuing on with a determination to stay true to herself. Her credentials opened up the opportunity for her to serve as foreign policy advisor on Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign. During the campaign, she worked closely with Mondale’s running mate, Geraldine Ferraro. The Mondale/Ferraro ticket lost the election, but Albright was inspired by the first female to be on a major party’s ticket and she was reassured of her own ability to hold her own among the higher-ups of the party. Albright began to host numerous social gatherings at her townhouse in an effort to encourage her party to avoid the issues that had lost them the election; the Democratic elite would gather in her living room and discuss the issues of the day. These gatherings led to her becoming one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars of foreign policy. She went on to serve as an advisor to Michael Dukakis during his 1988 presidential bid. Although this campaign failed as well, Albright came to view it as a learning experience. Her own knowledge was expanding, as was the respect others had for her experience and opinions.
By the late 1980s, the Communist world, the very thing that had driven Albright’s parents to the United States, was dissolving. Albright was ready to be a part of the future. In 1992, President-Elect Bill Clinton tapped her to handle the United States relationship with the United Nations. In January 1993, Albright officially assumed the role of U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. She was a force to be reckoned with. During her four years in the position, Albright became an advocate for a policy of assertive multilateralism. In part through her efforts, U.S. leadership in global politics and multilateral organizations was fundamental to the Clinton administration. She was interventionist. She lobbied for the United States to expand its military involvement in the Balkans in the 1990s, a stance that caused her to publicly clash with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. She also worked on behalf of furthering opportunities for women the world over. At the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1994, Albright pushed to make women’s rights a global issue. In her speech, she explained, “Our Department of Labor will conduct a grassroots campaign to…work with employers to develop more equitable pay and promotion policies, and to help employees balance the twin responsibilities of family and work.” The ideals she pushed for in 1994 continue to be points of discussion to this day; she continues to be a leading voice in the feminist movement, lending her support everywhere from international women’s rights campaigns to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, the woman who was First Lady during Albright’s tenure in the State Department and Secretary of State under President Barack Obama.
In December of
1996, following his reelection, President Clinton called upon Albright’s expertise in foreign policy once again and nominated her for Secretary of State. On January 23, 1997, Madeleine Albright was sworn in as the 64th Secretary of State and the first woman to ever hold that position. She fell into the new role with sheer willpower and dedication, solidifying her reputation as an outspoken problem solver.
During her time as Secretary of State, Albright advocated for increased human rights and democracy throughout the world. The years following the end of the Cold War were crucial. She fought to stop the spread of nuclear weapons from former Soviet countries to rogue nations like North Korea. Albright was also a champion of NATO, and she sought to expand the organization’s membership. Harkening back to her days as UN representative, she pushed for direct military intervention during the 1999 humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. In a speech following intervention, she remarked, “Out of this the international community and the area's people must build a future secure and free.” She maintained her position of interventionism and U.S. leadership in countries at risk of losing all hope of democratic rule. Her role as a diplomat was also integral to the United States’ foreign policy perspective, and she was heavily involved in normalizing relations with countries such as China and Vietnam. In 1997, Albright played a key role in the peace mission to the Middle East, during which she brokered negotiations between Israel and various Arab nations. In 2000, Albright made history as the first American Secretary of State to visit North Korea. She recognized the sheer importance of her job, especially because of her own immigrant, war-torn roots. In an address to students and faculty at Wingate University in 1997, she urged them to evaluate the role of foreign policy and affairs in their life, explaining, “An important part of my job as Secretary of State is to spread the word that the success or failure of American foreign policy will be one of the determining factors in your lives–as it has been in mine.”
She left her post as Secretary of State in 2001, but her work continued. In her parting address, she reflected, “I have been called the most powerful woman in the world, but I have on occasion lacked even the power of speech.” She recognized the gravity of the situations she had been a part of, and the weight of the responsibility the United States had. Soon after, she became chairwoman of the board for the National Democratic Institute. She also participated in and continues to participate in speaking engagements across the globe, sharing her knowledge and expertise of international affairs. In 2007, Albright launched the private investment fund Albright Capital Management, putting her international expertise to work by making long-term investments in emerging markets for clients. She is also the co-chair if the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm, and the chair of the advisory council for The Hague Institute for Global Justice.
She has received many awards and honors for her contributions to diplomacy, her encouragement of democracy, and her efforts in global affairs. In 2012, President Obama awarded Madeleine Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In her farewell remarks to the State Department, Albright mused on the indestructible nature of America’s republic, saying, “I am grateful that we live in a country where the parties and the personalities may change, but the principles that guide our republic do not.” In the current tumultuous political climate, her words increasingly begin to sound like a goal to reach rather than a standard to maintain.