Michele Ames
Principal at Michele Ames Consulting
Michele Ames specializes in issues management, political and public policy communications and media relations efforts for government, commercial and non-profit entities. She has worked extensively with corporate, civic, elected and non-profit leaders in proactively positioning their organizations and issues and managing challenging circumstances. Over the last two decades, Michele has managed organizational response for many of Colorado’s largest crisis situations.
Michele’s communications expertise results from nearly 20 years with the news media on both sides of the desk including 10 years of diverse communications consulting. She primarily focuses on public policy advocacy communications, managing evolving communications issues in a host of media environments as well as executive-level strategic consulting around issues management situations.
After working for more than a decade as a journalist, Michele left her political reporting position at the Rocky Mountain News in 2004 to become the media director for the University of Colorado at Denver. Among other experiences, she grew her extensive crisis communications expertise after she was tapped by top university leadership to manage communications involving allegations against the football program in Boulder. She then spent two-years with GBSM where she continued to hone her issues management and crisis skills on a variety of corporate, non-profit and government projects.
In 2007, she returned to the University of Colorado at Denver as special assistant to the Chancellor. In that role, Michele helped lead and support the institution’s internal and external communications efforts including a number of crisis communications issues with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. After returning to GBSM, Michele honed her political and public policy advocacy skills by working on both statewide campaigns as well as significant public policy issues at the state capitol including Medicaid expansion and the creation of a successful program to provide long acting, reversable contraceptives. In addition, she managed the day-to-day crisis response for the University of Colorado following the Aurora Theater shooting as well as the death penalty trial.
In 2015, Michele founded her own consultancy where she continues to work on issues that make a difference. She lives with her husband, two children and two rescue dogs in Lakewood.