Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright

Marie Jana Korbelová was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the daughter of diplomat Josef Korbel. Her Jewish family fled the Nazi invasion in 1939, surviving the London Blitz, and fled Czechoslovakia again following the 1948 communist coup, emigrating to the United States. She graduated from Wellesley College and earned a PhD in public law and government from Columbia University under Zbigniew Brzezinski.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Albright as US Ambassador to the United Nations. In January 1997, she was confirmed unanimously as the 64th US Secretary of State, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of the US government up to that time. A staunch advocate of "assertive multilateralism" and human rights, Albright spearheaded NATO expansion to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and decisively advocated NATO military intervention in Kosovo in 1999 to halt ethnic cleansing. Famous for using antique decorative brooches to convey diplomatic signals, Albright was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.