Biography | Bernadette Meehan — The Foggy Bottom Room Where She Took the Ambassador's Oath

People treat an ambassadorship as a ceremony in the receiving capital.

Bernadette Meehan first took the oath in Washington.

On 29 August 2022, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman officiated the swearing-in of Meehan as United States Ambassador to Chile inside the Harry S. Truman Building at 2201 C Street NW.

A State Department photographer, Freddie Everett, made the official record that day. The caption places the ceremony in this building.

The path to the room had taken a year of Senate process.

President Joe Biden nominated her on 9 July 2021.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held her hearing on 15 March 2022 and reported the nomination on 18 May.

On 20 July 2022 the Senate confirmed her, 51 to 44, as recorded on Congress.gov as PN787.

She was then a political appointee with a career Foreign Service past: Bogotá, Baghdad, Dubai, a tour as special assistant to Secretary Hillary Clinton, and, from October 2014 to June 2015, spokesperson for the National Security Council under President Barack Obama.

Between government tours she had been executive vice president for global programs at the Obama Foundation.

The Truman Building is not Chile.

It is where the United States commissions the person it will send.

Credentials would be presented later, on 30 September 2022, to President Gabriel Boric in Santiago.

This pin marks the legal start of the title, not the first day on Andrés Bello.

For a living subject the memory stays with the public building and the dated federal photograph.

It does not follow her to a residence.

Photo: Official White House portrait of Meehan as NSC spokesperson, 2015, public domain (Executive Office of the President). The Everett swearing-in still exists on Commons under a long State Department filename.