Bernadette Meehan

Meehan was born in The Bronx, raised in Pleasantville, New York, and graduated from Kennedy Catholic High School in Somers, New York in 1993. At 16, she moved to Río Gallegos, Argentina, as a high school exchange student. She graduated from Boston College with a bachelor's degree in political science.

After graduation, she worked on Wall Street, including as a vice president of Private Banking at JPMorgan Chase and then as a Vice President of Asset Management at Lehman Brothers. She joined the United States Foreign Service in 2004.

Meehan joined the United States Department of State as a Foreign Service officer in 2004, and began her new career as a consular officer at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia. In 2010, she returned to Washington, D.C., to work as a State Department "line officer", advancing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's overseas travel. She then became special assistant to Clinton. She had also served in Dubai and Iraq. From 2012 to 2015, Meehan was the spokesperson for the White House National Security Council (NSC). In 2015, Meehan become dean and Virginia Rusk fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

In March 2016, Meehan was recruited by Ben Rhodes to help plan Barack Obama's visit to Cuba. She worked as a senior advisor at the NSC from January 2016 to January 2017. In February 2017, Meehan left the Foreign Service for the Obama Foundation, where she served as the executive director of International Programs, Chief International Officer, and then executive vice president of Global Programs.

Meehan speaks English, Spanish, and Arabic. She is married to Evan S. Medeiros, the Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service.