Deanna Horton

Deanna Horton is a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, focusing on interactive mapping, the digital economy, and research on Canada in Asia and Canada-U.S. relations. Mapping Canada in Asia can been seen on the Munk site: https://canasiafootprint.munkschool.utoronto.ca/. Some of her research can be followed on Twitter @DLHinTO. Ms. Horton is also a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center Canada Institute in Washington, DC and a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada. In 2022, Ms. Horton contributed a chapter on the digital economy in Asia to The Indo-Pacific: New Strategies for Canadian Engagement with a Critical Region, Hampson, Hyder, Parks (eds.).

Previously a career foreign service officer, she was appointed as Ambassador of Canada to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 2008. In September 2010, Ms. 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.

Deanna 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 the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Bologna Center. She also spent two years at the US State Dept Foreign Service Institute in Yokohama.