Terri McCullough, the first woman to serve in a formal role as chief of staff to a House speaker, worked alongside Pelosi on big policy wins and broke a marble ceiling of her own.

By Grace Panetta, for The 19th

When Terri McCullough was a young college graduate in Northern California in the early 1990s, she knew she wanted to do good in the world somehow — and that she wanted to work for a woman. In 1991, she did just that when she landed an internship in the district office for a relatively new congresswoman representing San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi.

It would mark the start of a decades-long partnership, during which she and Pelosi, now House speaker emerita, would shape public policy around women and LGBTQ+ people. They also made history, expanding the limits of what was possible for w

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