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What is 1989 Warsaw Community High School graduate Michelle Nichols up to these days?
The former WorldCom employee appears in Playboy magazine's "Women of WorldCom" pictorial in the magazine's December issue (on newsstands Monday). She is featured on page 80 of the issue's six-page pictorial.
Nichols was selected from more than 300 current and former WorldCom employees who answered Playboy's invitation to pose.
In a telephone interview Tuesday from Los Angeles, Calif., Nichols said she was born at Murphy Medical Hospital in Warsaw. While attending WCHS, she was a member of the swim team. After high school, she went on to graduate from Purdue University in 1993 with a degree in organizational leadership and supervision.
After graduating from Purdue, she worked in sales for Airborne Express for three years before heading to CompuServe Network Services, in California, in 1997. That same year, WorldCom bought her division at CompuServe. Nichols worked in WorldCom's Los Angeles office as a global account manager.
WorldCom, a telecommunications company, filed for bankruptcy this year after it was revealed the company took part in one of the country's largest accounting frauds. Nichols said she found out the company was filing the same day the news was on CNN.
It was also CNN which led Nichols to Playboy. Her friend saw an item on CNN that Playboy was looking for WorldCom employees to pose after Playboy's former Enron employee pictorial sold really well. Nichols' friend sent Playboy some pictures of Nichols and Playboy called Nichols immediately.
According to Karen Ring Borgstrom, public relations director for Playboy, via phone Monday, after the Enron employee pictorial was released, it proved so popular, Playboy received many e-mails from former WorldCom and Arthur Andersen employees wanting to pose. Nichols' photo was one of the photos chosen, Borgstrom said, because the photo editors "really liked her pictures."
Posing for Playboy wasn't the first time Nichols modeled, as she did some local modeling in California. Of the Playboy experience, she said, "It was absolutely great. Everyone there was really professional."
Her photo session began at 8 a.m. and lasted until 6 p.m. Playboy did Nichols' hair and makeup. Arnie Freytag, a famous Playboy photographer, took Nichols' shots.
What do Nichols' family, friends and employer think of her posing for the magazine?
She said she spoke to her father about posing before she did it. She didn't elaborate further and her family still lives in the Warsaw area. She was in Warsaw in May for her sister's graduation. As for how the magazine might affect people she knows in Warsaw, she said, she hopes people don't act any differently toward her.
Her current employer, a WorldCom competitor, knows about the photos and "it doesn't really affect my job." In fact, she said, she's getting 100 percent support from the people who know her.
What justified her doing the photographs, she said, were the well-known and respected women who posed for the magazine previously - Vanessa Williams, Marilyn Monroe and Farrah Fawcett, to name a few.
Nichols' Web site, under construction, is at michellenichols.net
Playboy, whose target audience is 18- to 34-year-old males, has a paid circulation of 3.1 million.
