The Guru

By SHAWNA GALLAGHER VEGA

Nearly 60 years after he began taming his stutter through speech and debate at Xavier, Michael Sheehan ’69 is back on 16th Street delivering a master class in communication. The man Fast Company once called “one of the world’s top communications specialists, the go-to guy for anyone trying to make a point in public” is holding court before 236 juniors, coaching them on eye contact, verbal emphasis, stance, and gestures—just like he does for top CEOs, authors, actors, athletes, politicians, even presidents.

Presidents, Vice Presidents, First Ladies, Cabinet secretaries, governors, mayors, and members of Congress than any other communications consultant in the country. And politics is just part of his work at Sheehan Associates, his eponymous communications firm, which provides guidance to top corporations, financial institutions, tech companies, foundations, universities, and myriad other organizations around the world.

“It’s as interesting and challenging as anything else, but the stuff that gets all the attention is the political work because it’s the

He peppers his presentation with photos and clips of his famous clients—President Biden and former Presidents Clinton and Obama among them—noting the strengths of each, making them relatable. He knows his subject. Since 1988, Sheehan has been the man behind the curtain coaching every Presidential and Vice Presidential debate series as well as the principal speakers at the Democratic National Convention. He has advised more one that’s the most visible,” Sheehan said. “It’s also the one for me that’s the most interesting, not only because of my interest in public policy, but because you get feedback real fast.”

As he considers the extraordinary path his life has taken, Sheehan is quick to quote Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood looking backwards; the tragedy is it must be lived going forward.”

When the communications guru first arrived at Xavier in 1965, his speech was marked by a severe stutter. He learned to control it first through speech and debate, then drama, which along with tennis consumed most of his free time in high school.

During his sophomore and junior years, alongside his partner, Bob Cummins ’69, and the team’s captain, Bruce Owens ’68, Sheehan took home the New York state speech and debate championship. In his senior year, after

“we had conquered all the speech and debate hills there were to conquer,” he turned his attention to drama, which later became his chief extracurricular activity at Georgetown.

Sheehan rattles off the names of teachers, coaches, and counselors who loom large in his memory—Leo Paquin P’64, Pat Rooney, John Finnegan, Joseph Rafter, Peter Neary, S.J., James Curry, S.J., Russell Sloun, S.J. The memory of Jim Dinneen, S.J. still brings a tear to his eye. “I think he was as close to a saint as anyone I ever met,” he recalled.

Xavier helped him grow in curiosity and confidence, and so did the city. “Because I was born and raised in NYC,” he mused, “physically, everything else was smaller. No matter where I went, it wasn’t bigger, louder, than proportionally what I grew up with. The wonderful thing was I was never intimidated anywhere I went, even overseas. If you can make your way through Greenwich Village, you can make your way through anything in the world.”

In the fall of 1969, Sheehan arrived at Georgetown—one of 23 Xavier graduates to matriculate that year. “We were so well prepared,” he said, “because of what we went through intellectually, academically, and socially at Xavier.”

He excelled at Georgetown’s prestigious School of Foreign Service and earned a spot at Georgetown Law four years later. All according to plan.

Sheehan filled his days on the Hilltop with drama. He starred in school plays; wrote, directed, and starred in a musical at a local dinner theater (“I was earning the astounding sum of $75 a week”); and as a senior, he worked part-time as an assistant to the director of public relations at Ford’s Theatre.

The company manager of Godspell, the show appearing at Ford’s Theatre at the time, urged Sheehan to consider a different path. He gave the college senior an application to the Yale School of Drama along with the $15 application fee.

Sheehan soon felt his law school plan unraveling. In April 1973, he traveled to New Haven for an interview and learned he had been accepted to the Ivy League school—with a financial aid package to boot. No longer able to envision himself as a lawyer, he took a risk, declined his spot at Georgetown Law, and enrolled at Yale. His classmates at the storied School of Drama would include Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, and playwright Chris Durang.

In his third year of studies at Yale, when his stutter “came roaring back,” he finally availed himself of speech therapy offered through the Yale Health Service. Mentoring young people with stutters (members of “the club,” in his parlance) became one of Sheehan’s passions. In recent years, he’s served on the board of the American Institute of Stuttering.

After Yale, Sheehan moved back to Washington, where he became associate producer at the nonprofit Folger Theatre Group. “We were very good,” he said of his colleagues, who performed works of Shakespeare, new plays, and even took a show to Broadway for a short time.

Within a few years, though, he began to feel burned out. “I was finally learning that when they said nonprofit,” he quipped, “they were serious about it.” In 1981, as he pondered his next move, he decided to bide his time doing communications consulting work, just as his actor friends in New York waited tables or drove taxis.

Just a year and a half earlier, he had begun serving as the Folger’s Congressional liaison, successfully pitching Congress for support for the theater’s maintenance. “Suddenly I started to get these calls: ‘My boss has to give this speech, and she’s not very good at it. You must know something about this,’” he recalled of his interactions with Congressional staffers. “Since they just gave us all this money, I said, ‘Uh, sure. Glad to help out.’”

His foray into communications coaching, then a nascent career path, came at an opportune time. The era of 24-hour cable television had just arrived with the emergence of CNN in 1980, followed by the expansion of C-SPAN to 24-hour programming in 1982. Politicians who had never given televised speeches suddenly had to be ready for prime time.

New York Magazine article about Sheehan’s work with then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Numerous Democratic insiders, Heilemann reported, had credited “the Sheehan effect” for Geithner’s marked improvement in his public presentation.

Sheehan is on retainer with the Democratic National Committee and spends considerable time working with the White House. According to Politico, “he was one of the most frequent guests at the White House in 2021 who didn’t work for the administration or play in the U.S. Marine Band.”

“[Coaching] got more interesting, and admittedly a little more lucrative,” Sheehan said. “And in ’84, it just sort of took off.”

That year, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put him on retainer, hiring him to train 45 members of the House for TV interviews and speeches. That led to work with the Senate, and since 1988, coaching at the highest level of American politics (and overseas as well), including Inaugural Addresses, States of the Union, prime-time addresses, and press conferences for the Obama, Clinton, and Biden administrations. This year’s State of the Union marked his 19th as a consultant.

“Sheehan’s reputation is so stellar that even his competitors can’t help but sing his praises,” John Heilemann wrote in a 2009

Today, Sheehan is on retainer with the Democratic National Committee and spends considerable time working with the White House. According to Politico, “he was one of the most frequent guests at the White House in 2021 who didn’t work for the administration or play in the U.S. Marine Band.”

His relationship with President Biden stretches back more than two decades, and their shared experience battling stutters—as well as their similar backgrounds, sense of compassion, and well-tested resilience—has added a deep level of trust to their high-stakes collaboration.

While Sheehan recovered from a serious illness in August 2003, “the first person to call me was Joe Biden,” he recalled. “He gave me encouragement.”

Five months later, Sheehan returned to work full-time, convinced more than ever of the power of communication.

Sheehan is reflective as he approaches his 55th Xavier reunion, and exceptionally so after his recent meeting with Xavier students. He urged them never to fear a bold step forward, particularly in a new and unexpected direction. Even now, Sheehan credits the fearlessness with which he has approached his life and work to Xavier—“the rigor, the confidence, and the love, especially from Fr. Dinneen.”

In addition to his career successes, Sheehan is especially proud of his family. He and his wife, Riki, a former Capitol Hill staffer, recently celebrated their 40th anniversary. They have two sons—Ben, author of the Amazon bestseller OMG WTF Does the Constitution Actually Say?, and Jonathan, a top aide to Delaware Governor John Carney.

Sheehan converted to Judaism to raise his sons in the faith more than 20 years ago, but he remains deeply grateful for the lessons of his Catholic upbringing.

“I will say it to my passing day, the eight years of Jesuit education I had—four at Xavier, and four at Georgetown—just made all the difference.”