Michael D. Dovilla

Michael D. Dovilla is President of The Dovilla Group, a Cleveland-based government relations consulting firm. A native of Berea, Ohio, Mike is a past Presidential appointee at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), where he was the first executive director of the Chief Human Capital Officers Council; former senior advisor to Senator George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) on the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs; a U.S. Navy intelligence officer and Iraq War veteran; and his party’s 2006 nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in Ohio’s 10th Congressional District.

In his 2006 campaign to represent Cleveland’s West Side in Congress, Mike championed the need for legitimate, effective leadership and economic development to help get northeast Ohio moving again. Winning the Republican primary with 63 percent of the vote, he earned the support of over 70,000 voters (34 percent) in the general election, the strongest mid-term campaign against entrenched incumbent Dennis Kucinich during his tenure in Congress.

Prior to returning to Cleveland, Mike served in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government in Washington, D.C.  In 2003, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to lead the federal government’s Chief Human Capital Officers Council, an interagency panel of Cabinet department human resource executives who develop government-wide civil service policy.  Previously, as acting staff director and professional staff member on the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management and the Federal Workforce of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Mike was responsible for drafting and successfully guiding to passage five major bills that reformed the federal civil service for the first time in 25 years.  He also played a central role in negotiating and achieving consensus on key personnel provisions of the Homeland Security Act of 2002.  Mike began his public service career in the federal government’s Presidential Management Intern program, completing assignments at the U.S. Departments of State and Defense and earning the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award for his leadership in overhauling the Department’s strategic planning processes.

As a naval intelligence officer, Mike served on active duty for a year in Baghdad, Iraq with Multi-National Corps–Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Troy, and as a reservist in units at the Office of Naval Intelligence and Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence at the Pentagon.  His awards include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, and various unit and campaign awards.  Carrying the rank of Lieutenant, he is currently attached to a United States Forces Japan unit based in Akron.

Mike was recently named a 2009 American Marshall Fellow by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a program that convenes American and European leaders to discuss important transatlantic themes and examine ways in which cooperation between our nations can address a variety of global policy challenges.

A graduate of Berea High School, Mike holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics and political science from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio and a Master of Public Administration in international management from The American University in Washington, D.C.