Alex Michel

Alex Michel is a successful business and digital media professional, best known from as the first ever star of ABC's long-running reality television show, The Bachelor.

Graduating with honors from Harvard College with a degree in History and Literature, Michael also earned an MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business in 1998.

At the age of 31, a friend from 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 auditioning, he was chosen and spent seven weeks filming The Bachelor's pilot season which aired in 2002. He chose Amanda Marsh over runner-up Trista Rehn, but did not propose to her. After dating Marsh for a year, the couple broke up.

After the airing of The Bachelor, Michel returned to the business world has participated in a variety of media projects. He became a spokesperson for Match.com, guest-starred on The Re-Run Show, and became a spokesperson for Princess Cruises. Professionally, he went on to serve as the Vice President of Bernstein Global Wealth Management (2005-2007), a Client Partner at Rapt Technologies (2007-2008), worked his way up from Director of Advisory Services (2008-2010) to Head of Strategy (2014-2016) at Microsoft in London. Michel became the Managing Director of Generation Consulting, a D.C.-based consulting firm, in 2016. While maintaining this position, Michel also co-founded the media and technology start-up, NewCo, serving as Founding CEO.