Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has died from cancer complications. She died at the age of 84.
Albright immigrated to the United States in 1948 and she was the first female Secretary of State in the history of the United States. Originally from Czechoslovakia, Albright, formerly known as Madeleine Korbel, ran to England with her family in 1939 when the Nazis invaded her home country. By faith, the Korbels were Roman Catholics but they were Jewish by heritage.
As reported by USA Today, no fewer than three of Albright’s grandparents died in the Holocaust. After the war, the Korbels went back to Czechoslovakia briefly but moved to the U.S. after the country fell under communist rule.
After relocating to America, Albright and her family settled in Denver, Colorado, where her father worked as the Dean of School of International relations at the University of Denver.
Albright studied Political Science and graduated from Wellesley College in 1959. She married Joseph Albright of the influential Medill newspaper-publishing family that same year and the union produced three daughters. However, they divorced in 1982 and she never remarried.
Albright later bagged her Master’s degree and PhD from the Department of Public Law and Government, Columbia University.
She started working on Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie’s presidential campaign in 1972. Muskie’s quest for President failed but Albright later worked as his chief legislative assistant.
She later worked for Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter.
Albright worked as an international affairs professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C between 1982 and 1993.
She later served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton between 1993 and 1997.
Albright made history when she became the first woman that served as the U.S. Secretary of State in 1997.
Between 1997 and 2001, she served as Secretary of State under Clinton and she was highly influential in shaping the foreign policy strategy of Clinton and leaves a legacy of feminism and political power behind.
She is survived by her daughters; Alice, Anne and Katie; her siblings, Kathy and John; her six grandchildren, her nephews and her grandniece.
