Emily Brown - Distinctive Edge Partners

career accomplishments

Emily is an accomplished communicator and recognized community leader who has served as Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer’s liaison to the business community, leveraged incentive programs to create thousands of jobs for Central Florida residents, and led cross-functional teams on a variety of special projects ranging from implementing new technology platforms for city services to facilitating community task forces and regional planning efforts. While managing public affairs for a state transportation agency, Emily supported the growth of the agency’s work program from $1.6B to $ 3.2B. She also advanced Florida ACES (autonomous, connected, electric, shared) mobility policy by producing events like the Florida Automated Vehicle Summit, Automated Vehicle Symposium, and the Future of Transportation Summit.

In 2016, she was awarded the Medal of Unity by Florida Governor Rick Scott for her work in crisis response. She graduated from Leadership Orlando Class 91, Leadership Osceola 2018, and the Central Florida Political Leadership Institute.

industry expertise

As a Senior Account Manager for Distinctive Edge Partners, Emily shares expertise in external relations, strategic communication, and public affairs with clients across the aerospace and defense sector while effectively managing their projects to ensure mission success. She has a gift for messaging sensitive client issues and is skilled in government affairs, campaign strategy, relationship management, and stakeholder engagement.

Before joining Distinctive Edge, Emily directed public affairs projects for clients at a Washington, D.C.-based agency. She’s spent much of the past two decades working with elected officials and business leaders across Florida to deliver solutions to some of the state’s most complex issues. Her work in economic development and transportation infrastructure has contributed billions of dollars of capital investment into Florida’s economy.

During her time in public service, Emily helped pave the way for Orlando’s success in building a world-class tech talent pipeline and Florida’s emergence as one of the best states in the nation to test and deploy new mobility solutions. Emily found innovative ways to promote Orlando as a top location for entrepreneurs and worked to reduce bureaucratic barriers for small businesses and tech startups. As a persuasive advocate who built consensus across divergent stakeholder groups, advancing complex expressway projects taught her to see the big picture. Emily uses a holistic approach in creating public affairs and strategic communications campaigns, and she’s found great success in leveraging events to build public acceptance for novel ideas and technologies.

Emily opened her advisory firm, Veracity Strategies, in 2021 to provide strategic guidance to leaders across Central Florida using the lessons learned over a decade of working with state and local government entities. She also consulted for an elite top 100 public affairs agency where her campaigns advanced the policy and reputation management goals for Fortune 50 companies, global nonprofits, and national trade associations. Her consulting work included providing litigation support for a U.S. Supreme Court case and the design and execution of multi-state campaigns to educate and influence high-level decision-makers across the U.S. These campaigns helped move the needle on nuanced policy issues that broadly impact the tech and advanced manufacturing sectors like content moderation, age-appropriate design, trade, tariffs, onshoring, and skilled labor shortages.

Emily was awarded a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Central Florida and holds a B.A. in Organizational Communication and International Affairs from Rollins College.