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  “When Washington called, even though I loved what I was doing, it was too great a chance to pass up.”

  Gregory Michaelidis

  Former UB Staff Member

By SUE WUETCHER

Published: July 15, 2009

The White House called, and Gregory Michaelidis says it was too good of a chance to pass up.

Michaelidis, a UB alumnus who returned to the university in 2006 to serve as director of research and strategic analysis in the Office of the President, recently joined the Obama Administration as director of speechwriting in the Department of Homeland Security.

An immigration historian who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from UB and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland, Michaelidis says the new position “fits well” with his background since immigration is a major responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.

Moreover, he worked on a range of issues, from higher education to globalization, while at UB. So “working for a large and complex department like Homeland Security allows me to bring all the elements of my past back together,” he says.

That past includes working on foreign aid and development issues at the Center for Global Development, and on national security policy at the Brookings Institution, both Washington think tanks.

While at UB, Michaelidis worked to “communicate and provide a rhetorical and research base” for initiatives pursued by President John B. Simpson, including the need for educational reform in Albany and Washington—a key theme of the state Commission on Higher Education, on which Simpson sat—as well as UB 2020.

He signed on as a volunteer foreign policy advisor for the Obama presidential campaign in the winter of 2007—one of more than 200 foreign policy experts who ultimately served as volunteers outside the campaign—researching and developing talking points on European policy issues.

When his security clearance suddenly came through in May, the administration called with the job offer. He officially began work on May 26.

Michaelidis notes it was a “little bittersweet” to leave UB.

“Literally, it was one of those things where you get home and get a call from the White House. When Washington called, even though I loved what I was doing, it was too great a chance to pass up,” he says, noting that public service combining his interests in communicating policy on issues like immigration and national security is something he had wanted to do for a long time.

“I’d been hoping…to eventually work inside government and not always be shouting from the outside,” he explains.

Michaelidis says he grew up in Buffalo, and therefore has a stake in seeing UB 2020 succeed. “It’s been an honor to help promote, cajole and push work on that for the past three years,” he says of UB’s strategic plan to become a top research university. “It’s truly the best hope for turning Buffalo’s economic climate around. The future there needs to be a knowledge-based economy.”