Katherine (Katie) Gorka is the Director for Civil Society and the American Dialogue at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin J. Feulner Institute.
Katie earned her B.A. in Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.Sc. in Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She lived in Budapest, Hungary, for twelve years, where she came to understand firsthand the devastating impact of communism and developed a lifelong commitment to fighting for freedom and American Exceptionalism. While in Hungary she worked on the post-communist transition, including projects on rebuilding civil society, economic reform, and the legacy of secret police.
Katie returned to the United States with her family in 2008. From 2009 to 2014, she served as the executive director of the Westminster Institute, a think tank addressing threats posed by extremist ideologies.
She was President of Threat Knowledge Group from 2014 to 2017, providing training and expertise on irregular warfare and terrorism to the FBI, US Army Special Forces, Marine Corps, and law enforcement. In 2016, Katie joined the Trump Transition Team, and then served as senior advisor in the Office of Policy at the Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, where she focused on strategies for prevention of terrorism and targeted violence and combating use of the internet for terrorism and human trafficking. From June to August 2019 she served as the press secretary for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Katie lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband, Sebastian Gorka. They have a son and a daughter.
