Madeleine Albright

Marie Jana Korbelová was born on 15 May 1937 in Prague. Her family left Czechoslovakia after the 1939 German occupation and again after the 1948 Communist coup, settling in the United States. She studied at Wellesley College and earned a doctorate from Columbia University. She worked on the National Security Council staff in the late 1970s, taught at Georgetown, and served as United States ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997.

President Clinton named her secretary of state in 1997, the first woman to hold the office. She served through 2001, a period that included NATO’s intervention in Kosovo and debates over Iraq and enlargement of the Atlantic alliance. She later wrote memoirs, including Prague Winter, taught, and remained a public commentator until her death in Washington, D.C., on 23 March 2022. Brooches she wore to diplomatic meetings became a small public signature. The site’s Chinese New Year for 1937 is 11 February, so 15 May is Ox/Taurus.

No public-domain likeness is on file here, so the Year of the Ox emblem stands in on this biography page.