Madeleine Albright Secretary Of State US Bill Clinton Era

Madeleine Albright is the first woman to be nominated by President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996 to become the United States Secretary of State. The United States Senate unanimously appointed her as Secretary of State in 1999-2000. She officially reported to her position from January 23, 1997.

Madeleine Albright was born as Marie Jana Korbelová on May 15, 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovakia and was raised as a Roman Catholic by her parents. Her parents got converted from Judaism to escape persecution in wartime Prague. A nickname given by her grand mother, as Madlenka was later changed to its French version as Madeleine. Her brother John is an economist. Her father Josef Korbel was a diplomat. He served in the Czech diplomatic service and had a very fond relationship with his daughter. Her brother, much later remarked that her sister is a close copy of his father.

Madeleine Albright joined the Episcopal Church in the USA. Between 1936 and 1939 the Korbel Family lived in Belgrade until in 1939 they escaped to London. During the World War Holocaust most of her Jewish relatives were killed in Czechoslovakia. The deaths included all three of her grandparents. The family had to escape again during the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia and ultimately settled in the United States of America in 1948. In United States Josef moved on to become the founding dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He later trained the future Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In her book Madam Secretary, Madeleine Albright wrote of how her mother once told her that Rice was her father's favorite student. Rice too acknowledges that as in Josef's funeral, Rice gifted the family a planter shaped like a piano in memory of Joseph Korbel. She became a US citizen in 1957and after her graduation at Wellesley in May 1959, she married Chicago newspaper journalist Joseph Medill Patterson Albright.

Madeleine Albright first had her crush on him when the worked together for a summer job with the Denver Post. Albright did her schooling in Switzerland and in Denver at Kent Denver School. Later she did her major in political science on a scholarship at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. They couple had three daughters Anne, Alice, and Katie. Two of them are twins. Albright learned the Russian language while she was at the hospital bed for six weeks when her twin daughters were born. The couple decided to get divorced in 1982. Madeleine Albright