It's a black-and-white shot, the first photograph you see upon entering the small offices of Sheehan Associates. Standing at a lectern is former president Bill Clinton, clad in jeans and sneakers, preparing for one of the 1996 presidential debates. He looks casual, rumpled, relaxed. To his right, an enormous screen projects him from the chest up. Here he looks presidential, forceful, in control. It's proof that image and reality are rarely the same thing, especially when it comes to television.

Keep looking at the picture, though, and you notice that to Clinton's left, at the outer edge of the print, is a slightly built, professorial man with unruly brown hair, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Most people would miss him altogether.

And that's the way Michael Sheehan likes it.

You may not know his face, but you most certainly know his words, expressions, and intonations. In more than two decades of work, Sheehan has become one of the world's top communications specialists, the go-to guy for anyone trying to make a point in public. "Michael is a builder, a shaper of people," says Ron Pressman, president of GE Insurance and a Sheehan client.

At a price tag of as much as $15,000 a day, Sheehan helps CEOs of America's most influential companies deal with everything from hostile reporters to skeptical analysts. Although in the political arena Sheehan works only for Democrats -- Bill and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry among them -- in the corporate world, where he does 80% of his business, ideology takes a backseat. He has worked for everyone from the Tobacco Institute to Tiffany & Co. to the Teamsters. Depending on your point of view, he's either the world's premier message medic or the original spin doctor.

And yet it's remarkable that Sheehan has just returned from a frenzied week training every single one of the prime-time speakers at the Democratic National Convention, or that he's even able to sit and chat about the can of Billy Beer and the political memorabilia that fills his office. Not only does that smooth voice occasionally catch with the hint of what was once a severe stutter, but in August 2003, Sheehan, now 52, suffered a major stroke. For several months, this great communicator sat quietly on the sidelines, spending four hours a day in cognitive therapy to regain full reading comprehension. Only in January 2004 did Sheehan return to work, more attuned than ever to the power of words.

The Actor's Director

For Sheehan, the way people communicate has always been a source of fascination. In part, that's because of his own struggle to be understood. An Irish Catholic New York City kid whose father was a salesman for a moving company, Sheehan grew up defined in many ways by his stutter. People waited impatiently in line behind him at the drugstore as he struggled to get the words out. "The common perception is Porky Pig," he says, "but real stuttering is 'you cccccan't.' You just lock." As a member of his high school debate team, Sheehan discovered that if he slightly changed his tone, he didn't stutter. He later got involved in the theater and fell in love with performing.

While studying at the Yale School of Drama (fellow students included Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver), Sheehan went through speech therapy and reduced the stutter to the occasional flare-up. Today he can go several hours without a hitch, but when he's tired or stressed, it slips out again, a gentle reminder that even the message maker wrestles with his own demons.