What professional roles did Tara Reade hold before joining Joe Biden's Senate staff?

1. Early Hill roles: internship that led to a Senate job

Multiple accounts say Reade began on Capitol Hill as an intern and that this experience preceded her hire in Biden’s Senate office; one timeline specifically says she accepted a staff position after interning for then-Rep. Leon Panetta, a friend of Senator Biden ^{[2] [4]}.

2. Title in Biden’s office: “staff assistant”

News organizations repeatedly identify Reade’s formal role in Biden’s Senate office as a staff assistant (sometimes shortened to “staffer” or “staff assistant”), and place that employment in 1992–1993 while Biden was senator from Delaware ^{[1] [5] [6]}.

3. Duties described: supervising interns and office work

Contemporaneous accounts and later timelines describe one of her duties in Biden’s office as overseeing the office interns, consistent with the “staff assistant” classification; she also recounts attendance at official events such as an inaugural ball while working on the Hill ^{[2] [4]}.

4. Subsequent state-level work: California legislative staffer

Some profiles and later biographical sketches report that after her time in Washington Reade worked for a California state representative; Business Insider and other pieces cited in profiles note this step in her career, though details and dates in the provided set are sparse ^[3].

5. How sources corroborate — and where they diverge

Major outlets (BBC, PBS, The Guardian) consistently call her a former Senate staffer/staff assistant and give the 1992–93 timeframe ^{[1] [7] [8]}. Timelines and partisan outlets add color — e.g., one timeline emphasizes intern supervision as a primary duty ^[2]. Some accounts focus on biographical aftermath (defection to Russia, later citizenship claims) that are beyond the original employment question but show differing emphases across outlets ^{[9] [10]}.

6. Disputed details and limits of the record

Reporting also contains disputes about why Reade left the Senate job: interviews with dozens of former Biden staffers conveyed to PBS suggested she was fired for poor performance rather than for lodging a harassment complaint, a point some outlets highlight ^{[11] [12]}. Available sources do not mention a comprehensive résumé listing other federal or private-sector positions before the Biden role beyond the Panetta internship ^{[2] [4]}.

7. What the record does not show in this set of sources

The assembled sources do not provide a complete, independently verified CV or HR records listing every professional role Reade held prior to joining Biden’s staff; they do not, in this packet, supply personnel files, dates for the reported California state representative job, or formal job descriptions beyond “staff assistant” and intern supervision ^{[1] [3] [2]}.

8. Why these distinctions matter to reporting and credibility

Labeling — intern, staff assistant, staffer — affects perceptions of seniority, responsibilities, and proximity to a senator; primary sources cited here uniformly place Reade in the junior staff-assistant tier during 1992–93 and indicate she supervised interns, but they disagree on the circumstances of her exit from the office ^{[1] [2] [11]}.

9. Bottom line for your question

Based on the available reporting, Tara Reade’s documented professional roles immediately before and during her time with Joe Biden were: intern on the Hill (notably for Rep. Leon Panetta, per timelines) and then staff assistant in Senator Biden’s office (1992–1993); later accounts add work for a California state representative, but the provided sources give fewer concrete details about that later role ^{[2] [1] [3]}.