Ilyse Hogue is a Senior Fellow at New America. In this role, she oversees the Gender, Extremism, and Engagement Project.
Trained as an ecologist, Hogue has put those skills to use in understanding and leveraging systems of power: social movements–both left and right—as well as systems of governance and politics. Her career has spanned issues, diving into opportunities for and barriers to collective and societal progress. As a trained scientist, Hogue has always taken a data-driven and research-grounded orientation to effective strategies to advance social change, honing those skills in her time as a leader at MoveOn.org where she led the communications and advocacy efforts for the six-million-plus member organization. Hogue has also served as Senior Advisor to Media Matters for America where she grew a sharp instinct for how narratives move through the information ecosystem before co-founding a SuperPAC designed to expose and counter dark money in politics. Hogue spent close to a decade as President and CEO of NARAL Pro-Choice America (now Reproductive Freedom for All). Under her tenure, the organization tripled in size and Hogue designed and led initiatives to raise the salience of reproductive freedom in political and cultural discourse, dissecting and leveraging how to undercut its potency as a rallying cry for authoritarian forces. Her work resulted in a deep understanding of how embedded gender norms undergird so much of the current social friction.
Hogue is the author of The Lie That Binds, a bestselling book about how gender was weaponized in service of an anti-democratic agenda in post–World War II America, and is producing a podcast by the same name. Her work has been published in Newsweek, the Guardian, USA Today, Democracy: Journal of Ideas, the Nation, Harper’s Bazaar, and Teen Vogue Magazine. She’s been a regular guest on cable news, including MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. Hogue has most recently been at Purpose Campaigns, a global evidence-driven strategy firm, where her focus was on rising authoritarianism around the world and different strategies employed by communities and nation-states to combat the trend. She also serves as a Senior Adviser to Rewiring America, the leading organization supporting scaled adoption of electrification to transform our green economy, create equitable energy security, and reduce financial and health burdens that result from carbon based energy systems. When she’s not obsessing over thorny issues of democracy, power, and purpose, she is collecting rescue animals and coaching her kids’ soccer team. Hogue lives in Washington, DC.