American Secretaries of State: Madeleine K. Albright

Appointed by President Bill Clinton, 64th Secretary of State Madeleine Albright served from January 23, 1997 to January 20, 2001. Ms. Albright was interviewed for the American Secretaries of State Project in April 2015, during which she noted, “I think that the basis of any successful negotiation is to understand what the other person needs…because not everything that the person across the table needs is something that you automatically disagree with.” It was with this openness that Ms. Albright was able to promote the expansion of NATO towards former Soviet bloc nations, extend free-market democratization in the developing world, and further the momentum of the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change.