Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright died at age 84 on Wednesday, her family announced in a statement.
Appointed by former president Bill Clinton in 1997, Albright was the first female U.S. secretary of state.
“We are heartbroken to announce that Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, the 64th Secretary of State and the first woman to hold that position, passed away earlier today. The cause was cancer,” her family said. “We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend.”
The statement lauded Albright as “a tireless champion of democracy and human rights.”
Below is a statement from the family of @Madeleine: pic.twitter.com/C7Xt0EN5c9
— Madeleine Albright (@madeleine) March 23, 2022
Born Marie Jana Korbelova in Prague in 1937, Albright and her family emigrated to the U.S. in 1948 following the Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia. Beginning in 1977, Albright worked as an aide to former president Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Albright became a professor at Georgetown University following Carter’s defeat, and advised several Democratic political candidates. Albright was appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1993, and Clinton appointed her secretary of state to replace Warren Christopher in 1997.
Albright pushed the Clinton administration to intervene in the Balkan conflict during her tenure, in order to halt ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Kosovo by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
“I take full responsibility along with my colleagues for believing that it was essential for us not to stand by and watch what Milosevic was planning to do,” Albright said on CNN’s Larry King Live in 1999.
Former president Barack Obama awarded Albright the Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, in 2012.