Meg DiMartino (C’16) was a rising senior when Executive Director Mo Elleithee announced he was founding an Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University. Meg was involved from the start, becoming a member of the first GU Politics Student Advisory Board and Fall 2015 Fellow Buffy Wicks’ Student Strategy Team (SST). Nine years later, at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as director of major events for the Harris/Walz presidential campaign, Meg ran into Mo, who was leading a group of Georgetown students around the convention.
“It was one of my favorite career moments that I’ve had.” Meg said.
Meg didn’t start out her Georgetown career planning to work in politics. “I didn’t come from a background where people did politics,” she said. “GU Politics helped pull the curtain back and just say, ‘this is a job you can do.’”
Meg came into Georgetown as an Italian major, interested in culture and language, but quickly “learned that was a difficult path to take as far as what I wanted to do.” After taking international relations and government classes, she became especially interested in the presidency and campaigns and switched her major to Government.
GU Politics’ first year was Meg’s senior year and a historic time in American politics leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Meg said Hillary Clinton was her top choice candidate and she wanted to work on her campaign. She met the GU Politics team in August at one of the Institute’s first events, decided that she needed to be involved, and that semester joined the Student Advisory Board and Buffy Wicks’ SST.
“At the time [Buffy] was coming off of the Obama campaign and had done a lot of work there, and everything she said about working on a campaign just felt so right to me,” Meg said. “That was really what solidified the fact that I was like, ‘I need to graduate and work on this campaign.’”
Meg said GU Politics allows students to practice relationship-building and other skills which are important for careers in politics.
“In general, politics is about relationship-building at the core of everything that we do,” Meg said. “Nobody gives you a network. You have to build that yourself … you have to put in the work to build those relationships.
Immediately after graduation, she moved to Michigan to work for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as deputy digital director. Since then, she has worked for Emily’s List, the Democratic National Committee, and, most recently, the Biden/Harris campaign as director of presidential advance and the Harris/Walz campaign as director of major events.
Meg said it felt like a full-circle career moment running into Mo and the GU Politics student cohort at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
“Mo helped me start my career in politics, GU Politics helped me start my career … It’s always been ‘you can do this, it doesn’t matter if your background is different or you don’t know anyone who’s done this before.’”
