Morgan D. Ortagus has two decades of experience in global affairs, diplomacy, defense, and
international finance. She is founder of POLARIS National Security and the host of “The Morgan
Ortagus Show” on Sirius XM, a weekly Sunday show dedicated to American foreign policy and
national security. She is also an active U.S. Navy Reserve Officer and venture capital investor. From
2019 to 2021, she served at the Department of State as the Spokesperson for the United States of
America.
Morgan founded POLARIS to educate congressional candidates and the public about the need for
strong national security policies that keep Americans safe. In 2023, Morgan hosted national security
events in New Hampshire where she interviewed presidential candidates: Mike Pence, Nikki Haley,
and Doug Burgum. Prior to the 2022 midterm elections, she led a five-state tour, hosting national
security panels with local leaders, U.S. senators and congressmen, former cabinet secretaries, and
intelligence officials.
Morgan founded POLARIS to educate congressional candidates and the public about the need for
strong national security policies that keep Americans safe. In 2023, Morgan hosted national security
events in New Hampshire where she interviewed presidential candidates: Mike Pence, Nikki Haley,
and Doug Burgum. Prior to the 2022 midterm elections, she led a five-state tour, hosting national
security panels with local leaders, U.S. senators and congressmen, former cabinet secretaries, and
intelligence officials.
At the State Department, she worked closely with the White House on the historic Abraham Accords
that brought the first ever peace deals between Israel and UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan. Traveling with
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to more than 50 nations, she coordinated messaging campaigns
and responses to sensitive and high-profile foreign policy actions, from hostage negotiations to the
U.S. campaign against Huawei’s 5G expansion in the West. She led U.S. government efforts to push
back against sophisticated Chinese, Russian, and Iranian malign influence campaigns, and was
instrumental in the United States’ determination of the Chinese government’s genocide against the
Uyghurs.
Morgan began her government service as a public affairs officer at the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID), where in 2007 she spent several months in Baghdad, Iraq.
During the Obama Administration, she was an intelligence analyst at the U.S. Treasury in the Office
of Intelligence and Analysis and from 2010-2011, was the deputy U.S. Treasury Attaché in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia. Morgan was the principal liaison from the U.S. Treasury to the financial sector in the
Kingdom. Morgan also served as a national security contributor for Fox News, and she continues to
appear regularly to provide analysis for top shows like: Special Report, Fox News Sunday, and
Outnumbered.
Morgan serves in advisory roles for a range of organizations that align with her passions –
including on the Advisory Council of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University, on
the Advisory Board of the Vandenberg Coalition, as a senior advisor to Concordia, as a member of
the Nixon Seminar on Conservative Realism and National Security at The Richard Nixon
Foundation, as the secretary of the 21st Century Policy Institute, and as a board member of Aerial
Recovery Group and the Bastion Institute. Morgan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political
Science from Florida Southern College, and she earned a dual Master of Arts in
Government/Master of Business Administration from the Johns Hopkins University in 2013. Morgan
and her husband, Jonathan, live with their daughter, Adina, in Nashville, Tennessee.