Biography | Bernadette Meehan — The Tower Hall Where a Political Science Major Took the Class of 1997

People treat a diplomat's degree as a Washington finishing school.

Hers was a political science bachelor's on this Chestnut Hill quad.

Boston College's own newsroom later identified her as Bernadette Meehan '97 when she came back as assistant White House press secretary.

The Chronicle piece of 17 January 2013 names the class year and the major.

The Wikimedia Foundation's appointment notice of 9 December 2025 repeats the Boston College bachelor's in political science.

She later told a campus magazine that she signed on as a financial analyst with J.P. Morgan in December of her senior year, then moved to Lehman Brothers, a sequence the college and later official biographies both keep.

The pin is Gasson Hall, the 1913 Gothic tower that is the public face of the undergraduate campus at Chestnut Hill.

Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap both place the hall at about 42.3356, minus 71.1705.

The classrooms of 1997 are not separately marked for visitors.

Gasson remains a working academic building on a campus that directs guests to posted visitor routes.

After Wall Street she joined the Foreign Service in March 2004.

That later turn belongs to other pins.

Meehan is a living executive.

This memory marks a dated degree at a public campus hall.

It does not mark a current office or a private address.

Photo: Gasson Hall, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, by John Phelan, 16 October 2011, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait: Bernadette Meehan, NSC Spokesperson, Executive Office of the President of the United States, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.