First female Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dies at 84
- Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as secretary of state, died Wednesday of cancer at the age of 84.
- The mother-of-three served under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001 and was a longtime diplomat.
Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as secretary of state, died Wednesday of cancer at the age of 84.
The mother-of-three served under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001 and was a longtime diplomat.
Albright was born in 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovakia and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1948 as a refugee after World War II.
Her family fled to the UK in 1939 to escape the Nazis, and then to the United States almost ten years later to avoid the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia.
Albright was a member of the National Security Council and advocated eastward expansion of NATO into the former Soviet bloc, and helped lead the 1999 NATO bombing campaign to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
In 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Barack Obama.
Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as US Secretary of State, has died of cancer at the age of 84.
The mother-of-three served under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001 and was a longtime diplomat. She is pictured with Clinton at the end of his administration.