Bernadette Meehan
Bernadette M. Meehan is an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Chile from 2022 to 2025. She has been appointed the chief executive officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, and assumed the role on January 20, 2026, succeeding Maryana Iskander.
Early life and education
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 of Arts degree in political science. After graduation, she worked on Wall Street, first at JPMorgan Chase and then Lehman Brothers. She later joined the United States Foreign Service.Career
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. In 2012, Meehan was detailed to the United States [National Security Council|White House National Security Council] and in 2014 she became the spokeswoman for the National Security Council. Meehan left the NSC in 2015 to become an adjunct professor and State Department resident fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.Meehan was enlisted by Ben Rhodes to help plan Barack Obama's visit to Cuba. She worked as a senior advisor at the National Security Council from January 2016 to January 2017. In February 2017, Meehan left the Foreign Service to serve as the chief international officer at the Obama Foundation. She eventually became its executive vice president of Global Programs.