The term alpha male and female was coined by Lorenz Conrad who studied the behavior of wolves in the 1960s. In wolves, he observed, the alphas protected their pack, were the only ones who mated and led hunts.
The term has been used in recent times to describe humans in leadership positions and those who are most financially successful. The obvious problem with this analogy is that humans are not wolves and have split from that evolutionary chain millions of years ago.
However the behavior we have witnessed in many self-proclaimed alphas is not how we expect alpha humans to behave but how one would expect scavengers at the bottom to behave. Let's not regress to what we have already evolved beyond.