Madeleine Albright’s Life and Career in Public Service

Madeleine K. Albright (born Marie Jana Korbelová in 1937) was a longtime diplomat with deep ties to the Democratic Party. After beginning her career as a chief legislative assistant for US Senator Edmund Muskie in the early 1970s, she served on President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council. She left the White House in 1981 and spent most of the next decade in academia.

At the start of President Bill Clinton’s second term in 1997, he appointed her as his secretary of state. Throughout her tenure in the position, she helped guide the Clinton administration’s response to Saddam Hussein’s human rights violations in Iraq, the dissolution of Yugoslavia (particularly NATO’s involvement in the Kosovo War), and North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear program. She passed away in 2022.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lived an illustrious and international life from her earliest days. Here are just some key fast facts about her personal history:

• She attended prestigious universities. Secretary Albright received her B.A. in political science from Wellesley College in 1959. She studied Russian and international relations at Johns Hopkins University before completing master’s and doctoral degrees at Columbia University. Throughout the 1980s, she taught in Washington, DC, as a professor for Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
• She was the first woman to be US secretary of state. President Bill Clinton appointed Albright as the first female secretary of state of the United States in 1997. Prior to that, she had served as the US ambassador to the United Nations for the Clinton administration. After she left the position, President George W. Bush appointed Colin Powell—the first Black man to serve as secretary of state—and Condoleezza Rice—the first Black woman to do the same.
• She fled the Nazis as a youth. Born to a Jewish family in Prague, Czechoslavakia (now the Czech Republic), in 1937, Secretary Albright spent her youth on the run from the Nazis. As fascism spread throughout Europe, she and her family spent years in Britain awaiting the day they could return home.
• She immigrated to the US as a refugee. After World War II concluded, Secretary Albright and her family returned home to Czechoslovakia. When authoritarian communists took over her native country, she and her family fled yet again. She moved to the United States as a refugee, where her father, Josef Korbel, obtained a teaching position at the University of Denver.
• She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Barack Obama presented Secretary Albright with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 to reward her for her decades of public service.

Secretary Albright’s decades as a diplomat granted her a great degree of wisdom on matters both personal and political. As you watch her class, you’ll hear her insights on:

1. 1. Diplomacy in action: Secretary Albright saw international negotiation as both a strategic and reactive endeavor. “Diplomacy isn’t chess,” she says. “It’s billiards.” Throughout this class, you’ll hear how she managed to handle the sometimes unpredictable chain reactions common throughout the world of international diplomacy.
2. 2. Learning from failures: Even the most successful people occasionally fall short of their goals. “In diplomacy, as well as life,” she says, “you do learn from failures if you are willing to analyze them.” In Secretary Albright’s class, you’ll discover how she saw failure as an opportunity to learn more about how she could succeed in the future.
3. 3. Making tough decisions: Secretary Albright had five key factors she focused on when making difficult decisions as secretary of state: objective, subjective, government, bureaucratic/political, and individual. In her class, she goes into detail on how these essential components helped her pursue effective diplomacy, the art she calls “the bread-and-butter tool of countries dealing with each other.”
4. 4. Overcoming disagreements: The art of diplomacy hinges on navigating difficult conversations well. "You learn when you find a disagreement and you don’t see it as threatening but as an opportunity to learn something," Secretary Albright says. In her class, she covers how to approach disagreements in a way in which both parties stand to gain something rather than lose.
5. 5. Respecting cultural differences: Secretary Albright spoke seven different languages, negotiated with dozens of different heads of state, and came to the United States as a refugee. In this class, you’ll see just what led her to say: “I have been very concerned about the fact that we ‘tolerate’ differences. I don’t like the word ‘tolerate.’ That means ‘put up with.’ I think it would be interesting to ‘respect’ differences and find out what the basis of them really is.”

For additional perspectives on leadership, check out:

1. 1. Bill Clinton on inclusive leadership: Drawing from his career in politics, President Clinton teaches you how to inspire diverse teams, manage criticism, and mediate conflict. To lead anyone from one place to another, one must first understand where they’re starting from. In President Clinton’s class you’ll learn how developing a framework can help you make sense of the world.
2. 2. Doris Kearns Goodwin on US presidential history and leadership: Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin teaches you how to develop the leadership qualities of exceptional American presidents. Looking at the early lives of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and LBJ, Doris’s class discusses whether leaders are born or made and why great leaders have ambition for something bigger than themselves.
3. 3. George W. Bush on authentic leadership: Having weathered some of the toughest challenges during his presidency, President Bush knows that the essential characteristics of a leader are humility and decisiveness. In his class, he discusses how to stay true to your values while building a strong team and making personal connections.

Managing relationships takes great skill and tact. Sign up for the MasterClass Annual Membership to gain insights from former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice on navigating disagreements and making tough decisions.