Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright, the first female secretary of state, who arrived in the U.S. as a young girl from war-torn Czechoslovakia before becoming a political and feminist icon, died Wednesday at 84.
Albright, who served as secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton, pushed for NATO expansion eastward into the former Soviet bloc and helped lead the NATO bombing campaign in 1999 to halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. She previously served as Clinton’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997.
Born in Prague in 1937, Albright – then Madeleine Korbel – fled to England with her family in 1939, less than two weeks after Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. While her family was of Jewish ancestry, she was raised Roman Catholic and only learned at the time of her 1997 secretary of state confirmation that three of her grandparents died in the Holocaust.
President Barack Obama awarded Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Following her diplomatic career, Albright, the author of several best-selling books, including a 2003 memoir, became a symbol of female empowerment.