Hometown: Austin, TX
Birthday: July 8, 1994
Height: 6’4
Is Nayte Olukoya really a “Sales Executive”?
Nayte from Michelle’s season of The Bachelorette just got a new job!
As of December, he’s working as an account executive (that’s corporate for sales rep) for a tech company.
Good for him, we guess. We do like it when cast members have real jobs, and it looks like this is a real job. But we had just finished writing our profile on Nayte and were excited to break the news that he left his sales executive position at Indeed in July 2021. We thought that we might have another Mari situation on our hands.
(When we saw that Mari left her job after Bachelor in Paradise filmed but before it finished airing, we were pretty sure that it was because she got engaged to Kenny and was relocating—and we were right.)
However, Nayte went and got a new job — and it’s in Austin. We don’t think this necessarily means he and Michelle don’t work out (if he is her final pick), as the job listings for the company suggest that a lot of employees are working remotely. Besides, Michelle has said on the show that she’s not tied down to Minnesota.
So back to the drawing board! Let’s start with Nayte’s Instagram.
Other than Bachelorette content, Nayte posts mostly pictures of his dog inside in nondescript locations.
When we were trying to figure out where he was post-leaving his job at Indeed, we found a few photos with friends in Winnipeg, Manitoba (where he grew up — Nayte’s Canadian), and some in Austin. Some of the comments indicated that Nayte hadn’t been in Austin for a while and might just be visiting.
But where would he have moved to? If Nayte won, he wouldn’t be able to openly move to Minnesota to be with Michelle before the season finale airs, because then the ending would be spoiled.
Previous winners and leads have written in their tell-alls about the way producers arrange secret meetings in random cities, complete with disguises, to keep the final couple from being caught by the paparazzi.
Plus, if Nayte really did leave his job permanently in July because of an engagement, he would have had to live off of savings for a really long time while waiting for that Instagram follower bump!
We were hoping to get some more insight from a source less curated than his Instagram, so we did some more snooping. This was easier said than done as Babatunde Obafemi Robert Nathaniel Olukoya has used different variations of his name at different times of his life.
His commencement announcement from the marketing program at Eastern Washington University lists him as Babatunde Nathaneil Olukoya, but lest you think the “y” in Nayte is a new fancy sales trick, we also found young Tunde Nayte Olukoya.
Tunde Nayte Olukoya with a truly terrible wax figure of Beyoncé
Along with making it hard to find any dirt on him, Nayte’s name is reflective of his Nigerian heritage and holds a lot of meaning.
- Babatunde is a common name for the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria, meaning “father returns.”
- Obafemi, another Yoruba name, means “the king loves me.”
- The name Robert is of Old English origin and means “bright fame.”
- Nathaniel was derived from the Hebrew name Netan’el, meaning “gift of God.”
- The meaning of Olukoya is “the lord is thy keeper.”
(Michelle means “who resembles God.” We don’t know her middle name.)
There’s also a chance that Nayte’s Nigerian heritage had a role to play in why his father didn’t want to meet any of his girlfriends.
All these names meant we had to pull out all the stops.
We even fell down a rabbit hole for a day thinking we found Nayte’s secret Twitter when Google indexed Nayte’s Instagram handle with the Twitter account of a basketball, investing, black culture, Seahawks, and WWE-loving Canadian who likes Bachelorette tweets—but only ones about how Jamie sucks, Clayton is a boring choice for Bachelor, and Nayte and Michelle are destined to be together.
Despite the coincidences, we ultimately decided it was unlikely that this Twitter account belonged to Nayte (we have a high bar for determining the owner of secret Twitter accounts).
So what do you have on Nayte?
Like Michelle, Nayte has worked in education. He appears to have more credibility as an academic interventionist than Will, as he spent some time as a teacher’s aide at his mom’s school in Omaha. (Don’t fear, Canadians, it looks like Nayte’s mother has returned to Canada and that he still has plenty of Canadian roots.)
Nayte was in sales and–after a bit of a gap–he still is. He’s still in Austin, unless he isn’t, but he’s probably not in Minneapolis. Yet.
And that’s Nayte—our winner! Unless he isn’t.
xo Your Nosy Friends, Also Mysterious Creatures
PS In honor of Nayte’s Instagram obsession with his fur baby, please consider a donation to the Austin Humane Society this holiday season (rated 81.78 on Charity Navigator).
