Michael was born and raised in the Bronx and has been a resident of Yonkers for the last thirty-eight years. He was elected to the City Council in November 2011. He has served as the Minority Leader of the city council for two years. In January 2018 he became the Majority Leader and chaired the Budget & Finance Committee and the Education Committee. Before Michael was elected to the Council he served as the Education Chair of the Human Rights Commission for the City of Yonkers. He is one of the founding members of the Yonkers Committee for Smart development and the River Community Coalition of Yonkers. He has been involved in many grassroots activities in the community, including being part of efforts to landmark an historic home in his neighborhood. He has been an advocate for Human Rights and LGBT rights. He and his husband Robert Voorheis were litigants in a Marriage Equality case that brought Marriage recognition to NYS. They are currently part of an exhibit in the Smithsonian American History Museum.
He graduated from St. John’s University with a BS in Medical Technology and from Long Island University with MS in Medical Biology. His early career was spent working as a hospital laboratory technologist, pharmaceutical researcher, and a teacher. In 1993 he became one of the principals in LEAP Technologies, a company that sells robotic instruments to scientific and research laboratories. He departed from that company in 2015. He now serves the City of Yonkers at the Director of Community and Government Affairs.