No matter how many pieces are written about the late Madeleine Albright, there will always be more to say. And it will never be too late to say it.
I once asked Secretary Albright if I should accept a position at the State Department as an under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs—something she had recommended earlier. Time had passed and I finally got the call to gauge my interest in the job, but by then it was already the fourth year of the Obama administration, and I worried that it would be hard to join the State Department so late in the first term. “Go forth” she said. “Don’t look at the calendar. Never ask if you should serve, but when.” Like so many women in foreign affairs, I followed her advice. Whatever she said mattered.
I first met Albright while working in the Clinton White House as a deputy director of communications in the late 1990s. I had a small office not far from the Situation Room. Albright told me that she had once sat in that very office while working for National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski early in her career. It was inspiring to think about her spending each day in that small space—a woman of only slightly under 5 feet tall, working for a rather imposing man. As I learned over time, physical height means little when you have the type of mind Albright did.
Over the years our paths crossed often. At the United States Institute of Peace, where I served as executive vice president, the secretary was a frequent guest. It was during those years at the institute that I worked with Secretary Albright on the Genocide Prevention Task Force with the American Academy of Diplomacy and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She co-chaired the task force with Senator William Cohen, former secretary of defense.
It is often the case with task forces in Washington D.C. that the co-chairs are ceremonial leaders who do very little of the actual work, which is left to the staff. That was not at all the case with Secretary…