About Emma
Emma Beals is an independent consultant with nearly two decades of experience in policy, strategy, and media across various countries, contexts, and policy areas. In addition to working on a range of ongoing projects and collaborations focused on addressing the global crisis in peace and security and the need to reimagine humanitarian aid, Emma is a Senior Advisor at the European Institute of Peace, a conflict mediation organization in Brussels. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. She is writing a book about the global crisis in conflict and peace-building for Polity Books and co-hosts the This is Not a Drill podcast.
Emma is a former visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab and the co-founder of Syria in Context, a highly regarded weekly briefing publication for practitioners and policymakers working on Syria that shuttered in the spring of 20121. Until the end of 2022, Emma worked on the Syrian peace process alongside a broad portfolio of other Syria policy work. She has consulted for peace-building organizations, UN agencies, INGOs, civil society and advocacy organizations, for whom she provided policy, strategy, research, insights, events, media and advocacy strategies, and more. Throughout this time, she has provided ongoing advice and guidance to government officials, elected representatives, and policymakers worldwide on issues related to conflict, foreign policy, and humanitarian aid.
Emma's analysis is published by think tanks and in policy forums globally. She has appeared as a commentator on CNN, the BBC, PBS, Katie Couric, CBS, CBC, RNZ, and TVNZ and has been quoted in the Washington Post, New York Times, and The Guardian, among other media and publications. Emma has briefed government and elected officials, UN agencies, INGOs, parliaments, think tanks, universities, and other audiences.
Formerly an award-winning journalist, Emma was awarded the 2017 James W. Foley World Press Freedom Award for her 'moral courage'. In the same year, she was also a James Beard Award nominee for a multi-part magazine series on the role of bread and wheat in the Syrian conflict. Emma's multi-part investigative series for The Guardian and others on humanitarian aid in Syria resulted in tangible policy change in the response. Emma's journalism has appeared in publications across the globe.
Emma is presently a member of the advisory council of Hostage US, an NGO dedicated to supporting US hostages and their families. She co-founded the Frontline Freelance Register in 2013 to better address the safety concerns of freelance journalists working in conflict before working with leaders across the media industry to form the ACOS Alliance in 2014 to find joint solutions to the dangers freelancers face in the field. She is a former trustee of the Frontline Club in London and was twice a Carey Institute Logan Non-Fiction Fellow and an IWMF Reporting Fellow.
Before her work in conflict, peace-building, and foreign policy, Emma worked as a consultant on major policy launches and in new government agencies across Whitehall, including the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Department for Energy and Climate Change, Department of Health, 2012 Olympics, and Health and Safety Executive. She also worked in government in her native New Zealand, where her first role was within the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct at the DIA in NZ.
Emma can be found on Twitter. Please use the form below for consulting, publishing, collaboration, media comment, or speaking inquiries.