Michael Ford

Michael Ford is the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of the American Dream at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. After a successful career in politics, government, and corporate communications, Ford leads the Center's efforts in generating original research and significant survey data on the American Dream, and in acting as an information clearinghouse for the Dream. Its overall mission is to study, understand, and preserve the American Dream during these changing and challenging times.

Ford served in nine presidential campaigns and more than 100 gubernatorial, US Senate, US House and mayoralty campaigns across the US. He served as Executive Assistant to the Governor of Ohio and Chief of Staff for the Mayor of Cincinnati.

Ford was CEO of his own communications company for 25 years and in that capacity worked with executives of Fortune 500 companies and served as Senior Advisor to the Executive Vice President of Internet Operations at Citibank. Ford has served on boards of a number of technology startup companies. In 2006, he founded GeniusRocket.com, a user-generated online advertising company; he currently serves as Chairman of its Advisory Board.

An accomplished speechwriter and speaker, Ford specializes in the economy, education and the Dream, government and politics, and all things American Dream. He has written for executive and political speakers for national and international audiences. He has appeared as a campaign spokesman and political analyst on a variety of national television programs from Larry King Live to The Today Show and Good Morning America and served as a political film advisor for acclaimed director David Cronenberg.

As a speaker, Ford has addressed audiences from large conventions to workshops. He has lectured at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Ohio State University, American University, Antioch College, the University of Cincinnati, and the Clinton School for Public Service in Little Rock, Arkansas.

A published author, Ford is currently working on a non-fiction book focused on the American Dream, its history, its relationship to immigration and international perceptions, and the importance of the Dream in American culture and politics.

Ford received his M.A. in government from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, was a Graduate Fellow at the Institute of Public Administration at Penn State University, and received his A.B. from Xavier University in Cincinnati.