About
It is all one voice
I run a communications firm for commercial real estate and financial services. I also write, and I sing. It’s one discipline practiced three ways.
The operator
I am President and Chief Executive Officer of The Smart Agency, a thirty-year-old firm I acquired in 2018 and now lead as a professional communications agency serving many of the nation’s leading commercial real estate and financial services companies. The work is centered on helping institutional owners, developers and investors say what they mean and become understood in order to advance their business goals.
I did not arrive by a straight route. I began as a professional singer and actress and was told no many more times than yes. I toured all fifty states and much of the world with national companies of Broadway shows. I then earned a Master of Arts in Global Communications at The American University of Paris, after a Bachelor of Science in Communications at East Carolina University, and later studied at the Bell Leadership Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Before specializing in commercial real estate I worked on behalf of Fox and MGM Entertainment, Ford, Michelin and Mazda. I work out of Irvine, California.
The rest of it
The writer and the singer
I write about leadership, communication and confidence, mostly because I keep finding that the hard part of business is not strategy. It is becoming understood. Those essays are collected here.
In 2024 I released Love In All Its Forms, a debut jazz album recorded with my father, Dr. Dennis Michels, on piano. I have sung on stages since I was a child, growing my love of storytelling through the art of music.
