Biography

Michael Patrick Leahy, a descendant of Civil War and Revolutionary War enlisted soldiers, was born in 1955 in Oswego, New York. He grew up in upstate New York , graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1977, and received an MBA from Stanford in 1981.

His professional career started as a management consultant with Arthur D. Little, and included management roles with Businessland, Tejano Syndications, and Glamour Shots of Canada. From 1993 to 1999 he was an adjunct professor of management at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management, where he taught the Entrepreneurship course. Since 2000, he has worked as a technology marketing and social media consultant. In 2009 and 2010 served as Vice President of Public Affairs for American Target Advertising.

He wrote his first book, Letter to an Atheist, in 2007.

In February, 2008, he was elected as a delegate to the Republican National Committee as an at-large delegate from the State of Tennessee committed to Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney.

Prior to the election in November 2008, he wrote two books: What Does Barack Obama Believe? and What Does Sarah Palin Believe?

On November 28, 2008, he founded Top Conservatives on Twitter, a list of conservatives on Twitter, which now has more than 5,000 members.

In December 29, 2008, he founded The TCOT Report, the source for fast breaking news of interest to the conservative community. Some have described the TCOT Report as "Drudge Meets Twitter."

On February 20, 2009, he co-founded The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, and called and moderated the very first conference call among grassroots activists that provided the centralized information coordination for Round 1 of the Tea Party Movement, a coordinated simultaneous nationwide event held at noon EST on February 27, 2009 in fifty different cities, which was attended by over 30,000 people.

From February 28, 2009 to April 15, 2009, he continued to moderate weekly conference calls among grassroots activists, again providing the centralized coordination for Round 2 of the Tea Party Movement, which took place in 900 cities across the country on April 15, 2009, and which was attended by over 1 million people.

He has continued to work on numerous Tea Party movement related projects since then, including most recently as the co-organizer of Election Day Tea Party, which helped 26 of 50 targeted conservative challengers win seats in the United States House of Representatives in the 2010 elections.

In addition to working with social media and communications clients, Mr. Leahy is currently the Series Editor for Broadside Books' "Voices of the Tea Party" series of e-books.