Allegro Public Affairs
Bespoke strategic communications, issues management, and
foreign policy counsel for public sector, corporate, and nonprofit clients
We sit at the nexus of communications, policy, and public affairs to help clients navigate Washington and the relentless global information environment. We have built and executed some of the highest-stakes national security and technology communications strategies in recent history. We’ve worked in war zones, board rooms, and the White House Situation Room. We’ve been the advisor prepping the witness for the Congressional committee, and we’ve run the spin zone afterwards.
Now we help you reach your audiences, defend your values, and tell your story.
What We Do
Al·le·gro |
\ə-ˈle-(ˌ)grō
BRIGHT, LIVELY, QUICK TEMPO IN MUSIC
Services
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We help you identify your audience and meet them where they are. Together, we’ll determine your communications goals, design a strategy and work with your team to execute it.
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There’s no such thing as “U.S. media” or “international news” in today’s information landscape. We help your teams navigate the global news environment — including digital influencers and the rise in state-sponsored disinformation and misinformation — to advance your messaging goals.
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The old Washington playbook is long gone. We guide you through the complex and interconnected interests of the executive branch, Hill, external stakeholders, and political media to cut through the noise and advance your priorities.
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Crises are inevitable. It’s how you prepare for and deal with them that matters. We help you develop your playbook, run tabletop scenarios, and execute your strategies with a level head and steady hand, always shaping how your story is being told and understood by the public.
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Your story and brand are unique. We help you tell your audiences about it with credibility, creativity, and authenticity.
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We help your voice stand out from the pack, get you ready for the cameras and the stage to effectively communicate your message, and connect you with influential platforms to share your insights.
About Emily Horne
For more than 15 years, Emily has been at the forefront of building and executing U.S. government and technology communications strategies, shaping U.S. and global public opinion on the most consequential national security policy issues of our time.
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 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.
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 a professor of media and foreign policy at American University and Boston University, was named one of Washingtonian’s 500 Most Influential People of 2023, and was a 2023 Fellow at the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University. She is a frequent public speaker on media and politics, disinformation, social media and emerging technology, and national security issues. Emily is also a Senior Advisor with WestExec Advisors.
A 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 and their two young sons.
Press
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EMILY HORNE: Many of the senior policymakers who were in and still are in the administration remember vividly seeing these intel streams in 2014 and then seeing what had been predicted come to life... All the conditions were there for us to try something new and bold, but risky. It was a gamble that this would work.
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"Emily has been a valued part of the Biden team since the transition. She is a creative, tireless teammate who has been a part of every major NSC initiative, and we are grateful for her service in advancing U.S. national security interests around the world," National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement
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“[Horne] helps shape the office’s narrative—how it gets across, which audiences to reach, how to reach that audience.” When she travels with Allen and McGurk, Horne helps them talk with reporters, von Hippel added. “We can’t win this without the media,” she said. “She’s incredibly competent and knows her job so well.”
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Twitter’s new Global Policy Communications Director has some serious D.C. experience
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This initial declassification was the first in an unusual series of coordinated public disclosures in which U.S. officials declassified intelligence from sensitive sources to expose Putin’s planning… Biden ultimately approved the strategy, which was advocated by Sullivan, principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer and National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne.
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The last time Russia moved against Ukraine, in 2014, intelligence officials blocked the Obama administration from sharing what they knew. But the Biden administration has studied those mistakes. “We have learned a lot, especially since 2014, about how Russia uses the information space as part of its overall security and military apparatus,” said Emily J. Horne, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “And we have learned a lot about how to deny them some impact in that space.”
