A Master in the Art and Science of Communications
Being in Gregory Michaelidis’ shoes is no easy job. As director of speechwriting for the Department of Homeland Security, Greg assists Secretary Janet Napolitano in communicating their agency’s policy initiatives on a wide array of issues: counterterrorism, border and cyber security, and disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Having been in the Obama Administration since 2009, Greg has helped shape the public voice behind some of the Department’s most widely-known efforts, from responding to disasters like the Haiti earthquake to promoting comprehensive immigration reform in the United States.
While Greg may have a job title die-hard West Wing fans covet, it’s clear that he has been working towards this his entire life. His academic career as an immigration historian and, later, as a policy and communications professional at a think tank, a research university, and on two presidential campaigns has given him plenty of experience in conveying complicated, and at times controversial, ideas to a large public audience.
Greg’s role as a senior associate for policy and outreach at the Center for Global Development from 2005 to 2006 also laid important groundwork for his career. As part of the Center in its earlier years—while it was gaining significant clout and exposure within and outside Washington—he saw disseminating CGD’s unique approach as both a challenging and rewarding task. In addition, working with the development community, a delicate mix of government officials, NGOs, media, and the general public provided him with lifelong lessons about to communicating complex policy issues to a variety of interest groups at once.
“I think the exposure to so many smart people using evidence and data to solve complex policy and social dilemmas helped me understand something about communications,” Greg states when asked about lessons he learned from CGD. “Too often in policy, advocacy, and in government communications is viewed narrowly … as a) the creation of products; b) by PR experts; c) once all the research and policy work is done. But communications—in the broadest sense of the word—is fundamental to every step of the policy process. The way we choose and use language, stories, metaphors, tone, etc., should be integrated early on, and then be measured and evaluated together with the rest of the program or intervention. The development community has actually been quicker to embrace this thinking than other areas.”
However, when asked about his favorite CGD memory, he reminds us that valuable career lessons are not always easy to come by: “My favorite memory was not when Lawrence entrusted me to finish the weekly update while he was away, and I did so … sending it to 5,000 people with a typo in the subject line.” He later adds, emphasizing how much of a tightknit community CGD was, and still is today: “But my warmest memory might be Michael Clemens’ head-back, wide-mouth smile and laugh. I got to see it again at the holiday party in December. For me, it’s my mental picture of the ‘hard-headed but warm-hearted’ approach of CGD.”
After a few years at the Center, Greg returned to his alma matter to work in the University at Buffalo’s president’s office. Working directly under UB President John B. Simon, he helped shape communications strategies for some of the university and state’s key educational and research initiatives. He was later part of the Obama presidential campaign as a volunteer foreign policy advisor, which eventually opened the doors to his role at the DHS—an offer that, Greg recalls, was too special of a chance to pass up.
Now close to the end of the Obama Administration’s first term, which Greg describes as “fascinating and intense,” he continues to assist Secretary Napolitano and her public affairs staff in their long-term and day-to-day communications efforts. Some of his most rewarding experiences as director of the speechwriting team include working on the DHS Secretary’s MIT Karl Taylor Compton Lecture last spring, titled, “The Future of Science as a Public Service.”
As 2012 is expected to be a significant election year, being in Greg’s shoes is still not easy—but is all the more exciting. We congratulate him for all his success, both in his contributions to CGD and throughout his remarkable career.
Greg currently lives in Washington, DC with his wife Tamara, with whom he is expecting a second child (a baby girl!) this August. His first daughter, Tessa, was born shortly after he left CGD in 2006 and is almost six years old.