Terri McCullough, the primary girl to serve in a proper position as chief of employees to a Home speaker, labored alongside Pelosi on massive coverage wins and broke a marble ceiling of her personal.
By Grace Panetta, for The nineteenth
When Terri McCullough was a younger faculty graduate in Northern California within the early Nineties, she knew she needed to do good on the planet someway — and that she needed to work for a lady. In 1991, she did simply that when she landed an internship within the district workplace for a comparatively new congresswoman representing San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi.
It could mark the beginning of a decades-long partnership, throughout which she and Pelosi, now Home speaker emerita, would form public coverage round girls and LGBTQ+ individuals. In addition they made historical past, increasing the bounds of what was potential for girls in an area lengthy dominated by White males.
Pelosi rose by the ranks of the Home earlier than shattering the “marble ceiling” and changing into the primary and nonetheless solely girl elected as Home speaker. The second time Pelosi took the speaker’s gavel, in 2019, McCullough, too, made historical past as the primary girl to function chief of employees to a Home speaker in an official, paid capability.
However now each are transferring on. Pelosi, who stepped down from Home Democratic management in 2022, introduced this month that after almost 40 years within the Home, this time period in Congress will probably be her final. McCullough is transitioning to the position of senior adviser for the remainder of Pelosi’s time period.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi stands with members of her employees on the Home ground as she pronounces her resolution to step again from Democratic management in December 2022, a second that marked the tip of her historic two-decade tenure on the helm of the caucus.(Courtesy of Speaker Emerita Pelosi’s workplace)
“I would work for Nancy Pelosi for the rest of my days if I could,” McCullough informed The nineteenth in an interview. “It’s time to make a change, reluctantly, because I love this work and I love this job so much.”
In an interview with The nineteenth in her workplace on the U.S. Capitol, Pelosi brimmed with reward for McCullough. Her legacy on the Hill, Pelosi stated, is “one of effectiveness, getting the job done and doing it in a way that advances the cause of policy that’s good for women.”
“People really like her, and they know the confidence I have in her and anyone who she worked for would have in her, because we know of her talent, her integrity, her judgment, her confidence she has,” Pelosi stated.
Early in her profession, McCullough stated, she labored on increasing authorized companies for survivors of home violence and selling world reproductive rights. Throughout Pelosi’s first stint as Home speaker from 2007 to 2011, McCullough led her private workplace and labored on historic and sophisticated laws just like the combat to cross the Reasonably priced Care Act.
She stated she discovered many classes from Pelosi — a vaunted legislative and political strategist identified for retaining Democrats united throughout powerful fights — on listening and fostering relationships.
“She has a standard of excellence which she demands of herself, so we all demand that of ourselves, too,” McCullough stated. “So certainly I thought about that in terms of excelling and doing well in my work. But I definitely thought about excelling and doing well as a woman in my work, because there’s still not enough of us in these leadership roles.”
McCullough’s time as Pelosi’s chief aide in her position as speaker from 2019 to 2023 was a tumultuous one which noticed two impeachments of a sitting president, the COVID-19 pandemic and the January 6 assault on the Capitol.
“I certainly came into this job as the speaker’s chief of staff never anticipating I would need to be a health expert during COVID, I would need to be a security expert after January 6,” McCullough stated. “These things, often you don’t anticipate, but you meet the need, and you answer the call. And I feel very proud of so much of the work that we have done. And even in the most difficult times, it has been the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Terri McCullough (left) and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (proper).(Courtesy of Speaker Emerita Pelosi’s workplace)
Democratic lawmakers and aides gave McCullough hugs and well-wishes at a send-off Thursday as they filed into the Home chamber. An emotional Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the highest Home Democratic appropriator and an early mentor to McCullough, was seen dabbing at her eyes. Rep. Dan Goldman of New York beamed as he snapped a selfie. McCullough crossed the aisle — actually — to shake arms and alternate pleasantries with Home Speaker Mike Johnson.
When Pelosi took the ground to talk and honor McCullough, whom she referred to as “a visionary, steadfast and deeply respected leader,” the Democratic facet of the aisle erupted in a standing ovation.
“She epitomizes, as much as any member of the House, someone who always understood how extraordinary this institution is and how it can transform people’s lives,” DeLauro informed The nineteenth. “I worked with her in the last days when the Affordable Care Act was under fire, and it was touch-and-go. And sitting with her, working up our strategy, and working with the speaker — she is equally responsible for helping to get that bill passed.”
Chiefs of employees handle each a lawmaker’s workplace and their relationships with different members, employees and out of doors teams. McCullough stated the job appears to be like completely different daily — each “keeping the trains running” and setting an agenda.
“It’s really being a translator, being a motivator, being a leader, but to me, the most gratifying thing is being the support that people need to do their job excellently,” McCullough stated.
McCullough “had advancement of women prioritized,” in each coverage she touched, Pelosi stated.
“When you do a job like this, your priorities move the day,” Pelosi stated. “And her priorities were: ‘How do we do this bill or this commission or this committee that we’re forming … thinking about the women? It’s not always the case around here.”
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi pays tribute to her departing chief of employees, Terri McCullough, on the Home ground on November 20, 2025.(Courtesy of Speaker Emerita Pelosi’s workplace)
McCullough’s instincts and relationships have been crucial to the passage of most of the massive payments handed when Democrats managed each chambers of Congress within the first two years of President Joe Biden’s time period.
“People told her things because they knew she wouldn’t betray a confidence, and they also knew she would make good use of what it was,” Pelosi stated. “‘What does Terri think?’ was a very important not only question, but a challenge.”
As lawmakers put collectively the American Rescue Plan in early 2021 to supply reduction to Individuals in the course of the pandemic, McCullough labored to direct funds to the state and native degree, the place many neighborhood leaders on the entrance traces of the disaster have been girls. In laws boosting infrastructure and home manufacturing, she labored to make sure girls can be represented within the jobs created in trades and technical industries the place they’ve traditionally been underrepresented.
“I am still, frankly, in awe every day that I have had the opportunity to see and be part of things I could never even have dreamed of, both the glorious and the horrific,” McCullough stated. “It’s hard to explain how meaningful it can be to do this work, especially in the dark times.”
One such darkish time was when a violent mob of Trump’s supporters ransacked the Capitol on January 6 to thwart Congress’ counting of the electoral votes for Biden’s election victory.
“One of the proudest moments of my life,” McCullough recalled, was when the Nationwide Guard secured the Capitol and lawmakers returned to the Capitol to complete the job of affirming the election outcomes. After Congress accomplished the rely round 4 a.m., she walked again to her house to get a few hours of sleep earlier than returning to work the subsequent day.
“All of my colleagues and peers came back the next day and kept coming back, because this place mattered so much to them,” she stated.
Within the aftermath, Pelosi stated, she didn’t need to direct the Home’s response from the highest down. McCullough labored with Jamie Fleet, employees director for the Democrats on the Home Administration Committee, on forming the Choose Committee on January 6. McCullough reached throughout the aisle to then-Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who have been among the many few Republicans to talk out towards Trump’s try to subvert the election.
Cheney, in her 2023 e-book “Oath and Honor,” credited McCullough and Fleet as “indispensable” to the committee coming collectively and finishing up its work. Cheney recalled how, on an evening when she and some staffers have been working late to finalize the committee’s public report, McCullough got here into her Capitol basement hideaway workplace with midnight snacks.
Terri McCullough (entrance row, third from left) gathers with members of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s employees in 2021.(Courtesy of Speaker Emerita Pelosi’s workplace)
“She knew we’d be there down around the clock, working to meet our deadline,” Cheney wrote. “I looked up from the pages of the report to see that Terri was sporting a ‘Team Cheney’ hoodie. It made me smile. It was a touching symbol of the unprecedented alliance we had formed, beyond partisan politics, to do what had to be done for our country.”
Regardless of the partisan divisions in Congress and ongoing political violence, the efforts of the January 6 committee have been “deeply meaningful,” McCullough stated. “I hope history will show how critical that effort was.”
Pelosi spent her profession recruiting extra girls to run for Congress and elevating girls to management roles on committees. McCullough, too, was a mentor on the employees facet.
“She not only is responsible in her job, but she takes responsibility for the opportunity here to make sure that she’s not just the first woman … that there will be many others,” Pelosi stated.
McCullough stated she did really feel the stress and weight of being a primary. “But it was a good pressure, and I hope that allows other women to take roles like this and not feel the pressure,” she stated.
And girls proceed to attain “firsts”: Tasia Jackson, chief of employees to Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries, turned the primary Black girl to serve in that position to a member of Home management in 2023.
“I have been so proud to have been able to contribute in Speaker Pelosi’s office for the years that I have, and it is my greatest hope that other women feel as passionately as I do about this work, work as hard as I hope that I did and are able to achieve great heights in the House as a result,” McCullough stated. “And I hope that they feel that they will love it as much as I have loved my experience here.”
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