Kaya Wittenburg

Kaya Wittenburg (born August 24, 1972 in Wisconsin) is a fashion model, businessman and actor from the United States. He is best known for his international modeling career, walking runways in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. He worked for a number of designers while modeling including, Gianni Versace, Giorgio Armani, and Hugo Boss.

He appeared on a number of TV shows, including Season One of Temptation Island. He is now the creator and executive producer of the reality television series based on his modeling agency Ocean Models, based in Miami, Florida.^[1]

Early life

Wittenburg was born in Brookfield, Wisconsin to his mother, a real estate agent, and his father, a transportation executive. He began life with ambitions for a career in television, but due to the lack of opportunities in Wisconsin, he started pursuing a career in medicine. This career began by studying Biology and Psychology at Marquette University in Milwaukee. While at University, he worked as an anesthesia technician, which would have eventually led to becoming an anesthesiologist. He was later recruited and moved to a larger hospital in Arizona. He left this hospital to pursue a career in modeling.^[2]

Career

Modeling

While working at a hospital in Arizona, Wittenburg met the owner of a Modeling agency based in Italy. He was offered representation in Milan, which he decided to accept. He went on to work for the designer Gianni Versace for fitting, print and runway work. Wittenburg then spent the next several years working across the globe as an international fashion model. He was known during his career as being one of the top 100 male models in the world; walking runways in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. During Wittenburg’s career he worked for designers Giorgio Armani, Hugo Boss, and Carol Pignatelli.

TV and films

Since modeling, Wittenburg has appeared in a number of TV shows. His TV work began on Fox’s reality series Temptation Island. He and his girlfriend of the time, Valerie Penso, applied for roles on the show while living in Miami and both were accepted.^[3] After the show, he went on to be interviewed by Jay Leno, and appeared in a number of TV shows. This included MTV's A Perfect Date and the USA Network's Cannonball Run 2001.^[4]

His history in fashion has led him to appear in a number of TV shows as a fashion expert. This included the BBC documentary The Hollywood Stories and ITV’s GMTV. Wittenburg has also appeared as himself and won a Celebrity Newsmakers episode of The Weakest Link, as well as on the premiere episode of the short-lived 2003 game show Dirty Rotten Cheater.^[5]

Finding Exhilaration

During his relationship with Penso, he co-authored a book with her titled, Finding Exhilaration. Trafford Publishing published the book in 2002. The book describes in Wittenburg and Penso’s own words, how they launched successful careers.^[6]

Business

After his TV appearances, Wittenburg moved into real estate. He worked for Majestic Properties as a New Construction Sales Director and Chief Operating Officer for four years during which the company was named the Fastest Growing Privately-Held Real Estate Firm in America according to Inc 500 Magazine. He then went on to be the President of Titanium X Global Properties.^[7] After working in real estate, he founded Ocean Models, based in Miami.^[8] Wittenburg and his co-founder Josh Souza launched the modeling agency in November 2010.^[9] Models from the agency have been photographed in Vogue and Elle Magazine.^[10] Wittenburg also has created and produced a reality series based around the Ocean Models agency, which was completed in 2013. As of March 2014 Kaya Wittenburg had founded and was the leading executive of Miami, FL based real estate firm Sky Five Properties which provides services to leading property developers.

In 2007 he was judge of Rothschild Business Planning Competition at the University of Miami.BusinessMiami (Fall 2007).  Missing or empty |title= (help); |access-date= requires |url= (help) Wittenburg has also been involved with Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce where he was on the board of Directors from 2007 to 2008.^[11] He arranged a number of Miami Business Seminars with Public Figures while on the board. This included the ex-governor of Florida, Bob Graham.

Filmography

References