Deanna Horton

Deanna Horton is a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and at the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada; a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, DC, and a Senior Fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.  Recent publications include a co-authored chapter “Together and Apart: Canada and the United States and the World Beyond” in Canada and the United States: Differences That Count, Fifth Edition, University of Toronto Press, 2023.

Previously a career foreign service officer, she was appointed as Ambassador of Canada to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 2008. In September 2010, Horton returned to the Canadian Embassy in Washington as Minister (Congressional, Public and Intergovernmental Affairs). Other overseas assignments included Hamburg, Tokyo, and Washington D.C. In Ottawa, she was a negotiator on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In 2004, she took a leave of absence from the government to join Sherritt International Corporation as Vice-President, Investor Relations and Corporate Affairs, returning to the Department of Foreign Affairs in 2006 where she served as Director of the Office of the Deputy Minister for International Trade.

Horton was born in Toronto. She graduated with an Honours BA in Political Science at McGill University, received a MA in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and a Diploma in International Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Bologna Center. She also spent two years at the U.S. State Dept Foreign Service Institute in Yokohama.

Updated July 2023