Ballard Partners Welcomes Amy Tong to Lead AI Practice Group

Former Deputy DNI Amaryllis Fox Kennedy Joins Ballard Partners

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Ballard Partners, a leading international government relations and public affairs firm, today announced that Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former Associate Director for Intelligence and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, is joining the firm as a Partner. Fox Kennedy will serve as co-chair of the firm’s Emerging Technology and AI Practice Group, deepening a team that advises clients at the intersection of technology, national security, and government policy.

“We are thrilled to welcome Amaryllis to Ballard Partners and to our Emerging Technology and AI Practice Group,” said Brian Ballard, President and Founder of Ballard Partners. “She has operated at the very highest levels of the intelligence community and the federal budget process, and few people in the country understand as well as she does how government funds, oversees, and adopts advanced technology. As artificial intelligence transforms every industry and every corner of government, her judgment and experience will be invaluable to our clients.”

Most recently, Fox Kennedy served as Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Policy and Capabilities, a senior post at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responsible for shaping intelligence policy and the capabilities on which the intelligence community relies.

Before that, she served as Associate Director for Intelligence and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, a first-of-its-kind role in which she oversaw the budgets of the entire U.S. intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the other agencies that make up the community. In that capacity she sat at the center of decisions on how billions of dollars in intelligence and national security resources are prioritized and deployed, and gained direct, working knowledge of how emerging technology and artificial intelligence investments move through the federal government.

She also serves as a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

Following a decade in Silicon Valley working at the nexus of natural language processing, early artificial intelligence, and social media, she served as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign manager during the 2024 presidential cycle, leveraging cutting-edge technology to revolutionize coalition building, grassroots politics, and national impact.

“Ballard Partners is widely recognized as one of the most effective and forward-thinking government relations firms in the country, and I am honored to join such a talented team,” said Fox Kennedy. “Emerging technology and artificial intelligence are reshaping our economy and our national security at an extraordinary pace, and I look forward to helping innovators and established leaders alike engage effectively with government at a moment when the stakes could not be higher.”

Before her government service, Fox Kennedy spent nearly a decade as an officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, where she worked under non-official cover to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorist networks.

She is the author of the bestselling memoir Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA and hosted the Netflix documentary series The Business of Drugs. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oxford and a master’s degree in conflict and terrorism from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.

The addition of Fox Kennedy further underscores Ballard Partners’ commitment to maintaining a best-in-class advocacy team and expanding its strategic capabilities at the intersection of technology, business, and government.