Biography | Adena Friedman — The Political Science Degree Finished on This Campus in 1991

People file Nasdaq's chair under Wall Street. The first diploma was a political-science degree on this Berkshire campus. Adena Robinson Testa was born in Baltimore in 1969. Her father, Michael D. Testa, spent a career at T. Rowe Price. Her mother, Adena W. Testa, practiced law in Baltimore. She took a Bachelor of Arts in political science at Williams College and finished in 1991. Owen's alumni magazine later recorded that class year when it explained why she did not go to Capitol Hill. She also worked in Soviet studies. A junior-year Hill internship and a Nashville summer in Al Gore's Senate field office were the civic tests she ran before senior year. Williams sits along Main Street in Williamstown. Griffin Hall, the older brick ranges, and Thompson Memorial Chapel still face the same street she walked as an undergraduate. The 1991 job market was thin. She went south to graduate school instead of taking a first job in Washington. The unpaid Nasdaq internship was still two years away. Photo: Daderot, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.