Monica Aksamit

Monica Aksamit (born February 18, 1990) is an American former Olympic saber fencer. She represented the United States at the 2016 Summer Olympics, earning a bronze medal in the Women's Saber Team competition. She won a gold medal with Team USA at the 2019 Pan American Games. In 2022, she was a contestant on the dating and relationship reality television series Joe Millionaire: For Richer or Poorer.

Early life Aksamit was born in New York City, lived in Matawan, New Jersey and Morganville, New Jersey, and since 2020 has lived in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother (Marzena Kaminska) and father (Peter Aksamit), both of whom immigrated to the United States from Poland, divorced when she was nine years old, after which her mother raised her, and she has a half-sister, Olivia. All of her family other than her immediate family lives in Poland.

She returned to the United States for kindergarten, and later attended public elementary and middle schools in Matawan.

Aksamit then attended Pennsylvania State University (2012) on a full fencing scholarship, majoring in kinesiology.

Fencing career Early years Aksamit started fencing when she was nine years old. As she describes her introduction to the sport: "They handed me a sword. They said, 'Hit the other kid'. I did. Everybody clapped and cheered. I was like, 'I don't understand what's going on. But, okay. This seems like a great time.'" She helped Team USA win the team gold medal at the 2016 Pan American Fencing Championships in Panama City, Panama. She was subbed in the bronze medal match against Italy. She had fractured a vertebra in her back training for the Olympics, so she had to wear a back brace to compete in the Games.

The following year, Aksamit won a silver medal with Team USA at the 2017 Pan American Fencing Championships in Montreal, Canada. Two years later, she again won a gold medal with Team USA, this time at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru. In 2019, strapped for cash as she trained in an effort to again make Team USA for the Olympics, in order to make ends meet she lived with her mother in New Jersey, and worked a number of jobs in between training sessions. She also launched a GoFundMe campaign in September 2019 to cover her training and travel expenses, which raised over $30,000. The United States Olympic Committee gave her a stipend of $300 a month. She narrowly missed qualifying for Team USA for the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Outside of fencing In 2022, it was announced that she would be a contestant on the Fox television series Joe Millionaire: For Richer or Poorer, an American dating and relationship reality television series featuring 18 women competing for two bachelors, one of whom is secretly a millionaire. She hesitated about accepting appearing on the show, but thought: "Well, love hasn’t really worked out for me. And I don’t know anybody who finds love on dating apps. I feel like I am digging through trash to find the one diamond."

In 2022, she was signed with Ford Models, and had 100,000 Instagram followers.