CGA Team
Katie Tobin, Senior Advisor
Katie is a homeland security expert with over twenty years of experience in the industry. From 2021 to 2024, Katie served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Transborder in the White House National Security Council. In this role, she led the development of U.S. policy on a wide range of cross-border national security and homeland security matters, including aviation and maritime security, border security, global immigration and visa policy, and security screening and vetting.
During her tenure in the White House, Katie was the lead negotiator for the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, a migration pact adopted by 21 countries in the Western Hemisphere in June 2022. In the aviation sphere, she drove the launch of the Domestic Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) National Action Plan in April 2022, the first whole-of-government strategy to protect against the nefarious use of commercial drones. For her contribution to maritime security, the U.S. Coast Guard awarded her the Distinguished Public Service Award in 2024. She is also the recipient of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2024 Distinguished Service Medal.
Before joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Katie served for nearly a decade with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and also previously worked for the Department of Homeland Security and a private law firm in Chicago.
In 2024, Katie returned to her hometown of Chicago. There she served as a Pritzker Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. She is currently a nonresident scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace' American Statecraft Program, a senior advisor with WestExec Advisors LLC, and a regular press contributor in print and TV media, including the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and News Nation.
She earned her B.A. and J.D. from Villanova University and The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law.