The daughter of a Czechoslovakian political refugee seeking asylum in America, Madeleine Albright and her family migrated to America in 1948. Having lived in multiple countries before reaching high school, she shared her father's passion for international relations and went on to become the first female secretary of state and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the US government at the time. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.
During her tenure as secretary of state, Albright played an important role in the 1999 intervention that separated Kosovo from Serbia — she defied convention by going around the UN Security Council and engaging NATO. While this portion of her legacy is controversial, she defended her actions, saying, "What we did there was not legal, but it was right." In Kosovo today, Albright is widely regarded as a human rights hero who took a hard stand against genocide.
Albright currently serves as a professor of international relations at Georgetown University, and in 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Barack Obama. Secretary Albright also serves as a board director for the Council on Foreign Relations.
She's been known to say, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other." However, when this remark was seen as a criticism of women who favored Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the recent presidential primary, Albright went on record saying, "I didn't mean to argue that women should support a candidate based solely on gender."
