As Executive Director of Future Borders Coalition, Laura Dawson works with government and industry leaders in to facilitate Canada-U.S. cooperation on supply chains, travel and digital technology. In recognition of this work, she was named one of Canada’s Top 50 Foreign Policy Influencers of 2024 by the Hill Times. She has been an advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Team Canada Initiative in the United States and is a technical advisor to the Canada U.S-Trade Council.

Prior to her work at FBC, Dr. Dawson led the North America office of the Amazon Web Services Institute, facilitating public sector digital transformation in the cloud. Other posts include director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., the only Congressionally-mandated international affairs think tank in the United States. She founded Dawson Strategic, an economic policy consultancy based in Toronto, Ontario, and was senior economic advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Canada during the Obama administration.

Dawson serves on the teaching faculty at the Master of Public Policy program at McGill University and is a board member of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. She is a member of the Government of Canada’s Public Sector Productivity Working Group and was jury co-chair for the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (2021-2023).

Dr. Dawson holds a PhD in Political Science. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and is married to U.S. Ambassador (ret) Charles Shapiro.