Emily Horne is the founder and CEO of Allegro Public Affairs, a DC-based consultancy that provides strategic communications, issue management, and foreign policy counsel for a wide range of private sector and nonprofit clients.

Emily served as the first Special Assistant to the President, Spokesperson and Senior Director for Press at the National Security Council (NSC) in the Biden Administration, where she led White House and interagency communications strategies and media engagement on all foreign policy and national security issues. Emily helped develop and execute the Biden Administration’s strategy to declassify, share, and publicize intelligence in the run-up to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, denying Russia narrative control around the invasion and helping rally the world in support of Ukraine.  Emily joined the NSC from the Biden-Harris transition team, where she led communications for the successful confirmations for Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Emily was previously Vice President of Communications at the Brookings Institution, where she also oversaw the Brookings Press. Prior to that, Emily led global policy communications for Twitter, where she led communications efforts around Twitter’s first-ever Congressional hearings in the fall of 2017. 

Emily spent nearly a decade as a career civil servant at the State Department, holding a variety of roles including communications director for the Obama Administration’s counter-ISIS efforts and spokesperson for South and Central Asian Affairs. She has been an adjunct professor of media and foreign policy at American University and is a frequent public speaker on media and politics, disinformation, social media and emerging technology, and national security issues. Emily is also currently a Senior Advisor with WestExec Advisors.

A proud native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Emily holds a BA and MA in History from The George Washington University. She serves on the board of the Greater DC Diaper Bank and lives in Washington, DC with her husband, their two young sons, and their rescue mutt.

Emily's discussion group is titled Contemporary U.S. Foreign Policy and the Press.