A veteran foreign correspondent, Michael covered the stock market before editing the WSJ’s opinion pages in Europe and Asia. He started his journalism career with the Agence France-Presse wire service from 1987 to 1993. He left the WSJ in 2005 to take a speechwriting job at the Securities and Exchange Commission. A year later, he went on to become a communications adviser and speechwriter on European and Eurasian issues at the State Department. In 2008, Michael became director of corporate affairs at First Solar, an Arizona manufacturer of solar-power modules..
Michael was born in Cuba and moved to the U.S. when he was 14. He has a B.A. in communications from Emerson College and a master’s in business administration from Columbia Business School.