ISD congratulates Ms. Bernadette Meehan on her nomination by President Biden to serve as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Chile. A member of the ISD Board of Advisers, Ms. Meehan is the fifth member of the ISD community nominated to serve in a senior diplomatic role in the Biden administration.
A career Foreign Service Officer for thirteen years, she served in a variety of assignments in Washington and overseas, including on the National Security Council staff as Senior Advisor, Special Assistant to the President and Spokesperson, and earlier as Director of Strategic Communications. Previously, she served as Dean and Virginia Rusk Fellow at ISD, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State; Special Assistant in the State Department’s Executive Secretariat, and in Baghdad, Bogota, and Dubai.
Ms. Meehan is currently Executive Vice President of Global Programs at the Obama Foundation, where she leads the development of domestic and international leadership programs for emerging leaders.
Ambassador-designate Meehan has been an active member of the ISD community beyond her service on the Board of Advisers. As a Rusk Fellow at the Institute from 2015 to 2016, she hosted the 2016 Oscar Iden Lecture, “Channeling Obama: National Security, Communications, and Politics in a Complex World,” with then Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes. She also moderated a Distinguished Practitioner conversation with Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, on the “Policy and Politics of the Iran Agreement.”
Deeply committed to enhancing diversity and inclusion within the foreign policy world, she has served as a lecturer in the School of Foreign Service, a selection committee member for the Ambassador Donald F. McHenry Global Public Service Fellows Program, and participated in the ISD-Cox Foundation video series on Diverse Diplomacy Leaders.
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