BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — Former Harvard University water polo athlete Alex Michel ’92 holds arguably one of the most unique positions in pop culture – he was “The Bachelor”.
Not one of the litany of individuals who have graced the American Broadcasting Company show since its launch in March 25, 2002. He was the original “The Bachelor” during a six episode first season of the program which concluded on April 22, 2002.
Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, Michel was the valedictorian, student body president, homecoming king, and captain of the swim team at Darien High School in Connecticut. He graduated with honors from Harvard , majoring in History and Literature, and was a member of the varsity swimming and water polo teams. During college, he spent a summer working as an analyst in the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President of the United States.
After college, he worked in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. He later became a documentary travel video producer, which took him to Australia, Brazil, China, Fiji, India, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand and Venezuela among others.
Michel later returned to school and earned a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 1998. He worked at CNET as a television producer from May 1995-to-May 1996, and at the Boston Consulting Group as a management consultant from July 1998-to-June 2002. He was named the Sundance Institute New Producing Fellow for 1993.
At the age of 31, a friend at Harvard Business School sent Michel an email about auditions for a new reality show in which a bachelor chooses a wife out of 24 female contestants. After seven weeks filming The Bachelor, he chose Amanda Marsh (now Amanda Caldwell) over runner-up Trista Rehn, but did not propose to her.
After the airing of The Bachelor, Michel returned to the business world as Vice President at Bernstein Global Wealth Management and with Rapt Technologies and Microsoft.
A prior spokesman for Match.com and Princess Cruises, he is currently a media/technology executive in Washington, D.C. following co-founding NewCo in March 2012 and serving as Managing Director of Generation Consulting in January 2016.
