Boston Globe CEO Michael Sheehan, Boston Irish Reporter publisher Ed Forry and Bill Kennedy, who introduced Sheehan.

Sheehan was raised in Weymouth and proudly calls himself “a regular Weymouth guy.” He grew up with and played CYO basketball with Brian McGrory, now the Globe’s editor-in-chief, and the two remain close friends and colleagues.

At the age of 15, Sheehan became a local sports reporter for the Weymouth News. After his graduation from Thayer Academy, he was accepted at the US Naval Academy, but decided after a semester to attend Northeastern. Then, he went up to St. Anselm College, in Manchester, New Hampshire, with a friend who was visiting the school, and decided “on a whim” to fill out an application himself. He was admitted and ended up graduating from the Catholic institution. During his years at St. Anselm’s, Sheehan worked on the weekends at the Boston Globe’s library, where he learned firsthand how a large newspaper works.

Following his graduation, he took a night job as a reporter with Quincy’s Patriot Ledger and worked days at a South Shore ad agency. It was at the latter that he found his calling. He liked the optimistic energy of the business, which, to him, was in contrast to the innate cynicism of so many men and women in journalism. He also loved the sheer creativity that drove the ad industry with its inherent demand for effective writing.

In Boston, Sheehan accomplished something that many business insiders viewed as somewhere between improbable and impossible. He succeeded legendary Hill Holliday co-founder and CEO Jack Connors and made his own mark in a big way, ushering the company through dizzying technological advances – he crafted winning uses of Facebook, Twitter, and smartphones for ad campaigns – and guiding it through the grim ad landscape of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. He points out that when the nation’s other top ad agencies were laying people off during the financial downturn, Hill Holiday kept its staff intact.

Sheehan has long evinced a personal credo that any CEO should be limited to no more than a ten-year tenure. With him at the helm, Hill Holliday attained record profits, but he practiced what he preached, and stepped down to pursue new opportunities. All of that would lead to a breakfast with John Henry, owner of the Red Sox and the Boston Globe. He had never met Henry, who contacted him “out of the blue” to persuade him to take on the role of CEO at the newspaper.

Sheehan has similarly parlayed his connections, his time, and his creative business talents to help a wide array of charitable causes and fundraising efforts.

In the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, he stepped into the vanguard of the community and business leaders who were determined to help the victims and their families. He was instrumental in the founding of The One Fund Boston to do just that, enlisting and joining with his team at Hill Holliday to create the fund’s website, logo, and message. The result? The effort raised millions and played an integral part in the still-evolving process of healing while never forgetting.

Among the many corporate and nonprofit boards of which he is a member are Catholic Charities, American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.,) Thayer Academy, and the Raptor Accelerator, a Boston company set up to aid promising new companies.

Sheehan and his wife, Maureen, are kept busy raising their young children, Catherine and Michael. Recently, he spoke with the BIR about his career, his years growing up in Weymouth, his new work at the Globe, and the meaning for him of the Boston Irish Honors Award:

A sturdy Irish heritage
“My family comes from Counties Leitrim and Kerry. The Sheehans are from Kerry, but it was ancestors from my mom’s side – her maiden name was Keaveny –who were the first to come over to America – they came well back. My grandmother came from Glenfarne, County Leitrim, in 1899. My grandfather came from Castleisland, County Kerry around 1921.

“They met at a July 4th party at Hough’s Neck. So many of the young immigrants met that way, at parties, dance halls, and parish socials. My dad was born in 1924.”

Sheehan looks back on his young years as something out of a dream. “It was kind of idyllic in its way. It was a good time to be a kid. We were always playing whatever sport was in season, and while there were leagues, kids then organized our own games. It seems like every waking moment outside home and school was spent playing sports. It was great. Like so many families then, we traveled just about anywhere you could go by car. We had a camper, and our family vacations revolved around it.”

As to his schooling? “The Academy Ave School in Weymouth, and then it was on to Thayer. My parents were committed to our getting the best private school education possible, and much of the family finances went to that end. They wanted all of us – my brother Fred and my sisters Kathleen and Mary Claire – to receive the kind of education that could give us an edge later in life.”
It was in Weymouth that Sheehan came to know the young Brian McGrory, now his partner as the editorial chieftain at the Globe. “We go back a long way. He’s a great guy and a great friend. I truly believe that it was somehow Brian’s destiny to become the Boston Globe’s editor-in-chief. I’ve said this before about Brian, but in my brief time at the Naval Academy, they used to describe two sorts of leaders: the ones whose command willingly follows them into fire and the ones whose command wants to push them into fire. Brian’s the one you’d follow into fire. He’s the perfect newsroom and editorial leader for the paper at this important point in its history.”

Where does Sheehan see the Globe at the moment and what does he see as the way forward in a media landscape that has shifted so much and so fast, technologically speaking?

“I believe strongly in the concept of the self-fulfilling prophesy,” he says. “If one believes that everything is doom and gloom, that’s what things will inevitably be. You have to believe that you can effect change that will transform things. Granted, changing a culture such as the Globe’s or any other major newspaper’s takes a long time.

“With the Globe, we have a great opportunity that’s grounded in the past, present, and future,” he added. “The paper is a pillar of the city’s proud past – what I like to call “Olde Boston” – with an “e.” What we’re working hard to do is to seize the opportunity to take that tradition and make it the catalyst of the new Boston. We want to maintain the great journalism that informs readers both in print and online, but we also want the Globe to become an active part of the new Boston taking shape around us every day. Taking on that role offers us almost limitless possibilities both journalistically and business-wise.”

Back to roots at the Globe
The 142-year-old Globe has taken many forms in its longtime role as provider of news to citizens of Boston and the region. For most of its history, it reported national and international news via wire services and kept its staff closely tied to the city where it was established, save for a stretch of almost 50 years, from the mid-1960s to the first decade of the new century, when it turned its focus more widely, setting up a well-staffed bureau in Washington and single-staffed coverage of international cities like London, Jerusalem, and Mexico City. And now, the focus is narrow one again, and rightly so, days Sheehan.

“The paper has to be Boston-centric. The national and international news has got to be more through the lens of Boston. Our current newsroom is a leaner but tightly focused team. It’s inevitable that we have to cover less ground outside the city, but I really believe that today’s readers buy the Globe to get information about Boston. No matter what, the solid and outstanding journalism that the paper provides – has always provided – remains the core. Brian deserves so much credit for the progress we’re making. We’re more than holding our own, and it’s going to grow.

“For me, optimism is the key,” Sheehan says. “People still ask me what the difference is between a newsroom and an ad agency. The basic difference is that journalists are trained to be cynical. Think of the best reporters going, and they’re probably cynical. They have to be. I learned early on that for me, advertising was a better fit. To succeed there, you have to be optimistic. If you don’t believe in the pitch and campaign you’re making, no one else will either.

“What I’m working with everyone in both the news and business ends of the Globe is to infuse the optimism into the cynicism. I’m confident that we’re on our way to achieving that and ensuring that the Globe remains the must-read for anyone in or around Boston.

“I do believe,” he added, “that the pessimism that was at the Globe for the past five years or so has evaporated, and that’s exactly what I want to keep going. The paper is so important to the city and the whole region. Maybe it’s because I remember the days when the Globe and other newspapers were such a fixture on everyone’s doorstep, everyone on the subway, and everywhere around here you went that [I see] the paper as part of the community’s very core. We’re adapting and optimistic about the future. I’ve also said it before, but there is nothing more important to a city than its newspaper except the city’s government.”

Sheehan’s takes that optimism and his advertising background to advance another big goal for him and the paper: How to make the Globe more relevant to advertisers and how to convince them that the newspaper is still the best outlet for them to get their message out to the public.

“One of the things I learned in advertising,” he says, “is that the more creative, the better the product – the Globe now – the larger the audience you’ll draw. That has huge appeal to advertisers willing to pay to reach that audience. The more revenue that comes from advertisers means more revenue to put into the newsroom.”

While keeping very busy in Boston, Sheehan often casts his gaze across the sea. “I’ve been over to Ireland at least a dozen times. It is so moving to walk where one’s ancestors walked. When they left, they were hoping for a better life in America and, I think, they were optimistic they would find that, even though leaving everything behind was so hard.

“My parents and grandparents were so proud of their Irish roots, but the roots they put down here in America were just as important. My father won a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart as a staff sergeant in France during World War II. And he was in the FBI for a while. His family was so proud of him, so proud that he and they were so completely vested in America and the opportunities that their hard work and sacrifice earned them. My grandmother was so Irish that she watched and followed the Celtics religiously – the team’s name did it for her.”

The model of an immigrant story
In many ways, says Sheehan, his family’s is “the classic immigrant story.”

Presenting the Boston Irish Honors honoree will be William F. Kennedy, a prominent Boston attorney and a partner at Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP. Kennedy knows Mike Sheehan as a friend, a family man, and as someone who translates his business success and acumen into community service. Kennedy also notes how deeply that sense of family and community were imbued in Mike and his siblings, Fred, Kathleen, and Mary Claire, by his parents, Frederick J. (“Fred”) and Claire Sheehan.

In 2013, Kennedy notes, Fred Sheehan passed away at the age of 88, and Mike eulogized his father in a poignant, often humorous remembrance that emphasized how that sense of place, so important to father and son, included both the family’s ancestral home and the new country that became, and remains, their home.

“Everyone at Fred’s service still remembers Mike’s eulogy,” Kennedy said. “When he was describing the family’s Irish roots, he had everyone laughing with the Irish accents he used. His words just showed how much love he had for his father, who always placed his country and his family first.

“As I’ve worked on my introduction for Mike at the Irish Honors event, I’ve been trying to come up with some witty comparison of Mike to “Mad Men’s” Don Draper. It’s hard, though, because Mike is really such a great guy, he’s someone who gives so much back, who does so much good stuff for people and causes. His immediate leadership in the One Fund came as no surprise to anyone who knows him. That’s Mike.”