Madeleine Albright 1937-2022

Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, who also served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has died of cancer at age 84, as reported by her family.

Marie Jana Korbelová was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia to Czech diplomat (and later American university professor) Josef Korbel and the former Anna Spieglová.  She was the first of their three children.  The Nazi German occupation of Czechoslovakia forced the Korbel family to leave the country due to their links to Czech democrat Edvard Beneš.  They moved to London, U.K. in 1939, where they endured the Blitz from the German Luftwaffe, and later to the suburban town of Beaconsfield.  After World War II, the family moved back to Prague and later to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where Josef Korbel was assigned to the Czechoslovakian embassy, later resigning after communists took over Czechoslovakia.  Because Yugoslavia was also ruled by communists, he sent Marie Jana to be educated at the Prealpina Institut pour Jeunes Filles finishing school in Chexbres, Switzerland, where she learned French and changed her name to "Madeleine".  Korbel later sent his family back to London and from there to the United States, where he claimed political asylum.  They eventually settled in Denver, Colorado after Korbel was hired as a professor by the University of Denver.

Madeleine Korbel spent her teen years in Denver and graduated from high school in the nearby suburb of Cherry Hills Village.  She attended Wellesley College in Wellesley Massachusetts and graduated in 1959 with a degree in political science.  Soon afterwards, she married businessman and publisher Joseph Madill Patterson Albright, whom she had met while working as an intern at The Denver Post during a break from college.  She became a U.S. citizen in 1957.  The Albrights lived in Rolla, Missouri before moving to, Chicago, Illinois and later to Garden City, New York.  In 1960, while living in Garden City, Madeleine gave birth to twin daughters.  They moved again, to the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., where she studied international relations and Russian at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.  She went on to earn a certificate in Russian, an M.A. and a Ph.D.  She also gave birth to her third daughter in 1967.

In 1972, Madeleine Albright organized a fund-raiser for the presidential campaign of Senator Edmund Muskie (D-ME) and later was his chief legislative assistant.  She was hired in 1978 by National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski as the National Security Council's congressional liaison.  In 1982, she was hired by Georgetown University, where he specialized in Eastern European studies.  During that year, the Albrights divorced.  She was a foreign policy advisor to 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and to 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.  President Bill Clinton appointed Albright as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 1993 and as Secretary of State in 1997.  She became the first woman to hold the latter position.

After the end of the Clinton administration, Albright was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded an international strategic consulting group called the Albright Group, joined the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange, served on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, and served as the chairperson of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, among other positions.  In 2006, she appeared in an episode of the TV show Gilmore Girls as herself.

Read more at ABC News, CNN, AP News, NBC News and USA Today.