The Ambitions of Korean-American Billionaire Michele Kang
Among Korean American men, the wealthiest individual is Michael Kim, founder and chairman of the private equity firm MBK Partners, whose estimated net worth is about 10 billion dollars. Among Korean American women, the richest is Thai Lee, founder and CEO of SHI International, one of the largest women-owned companies in the United States and a leading IT services provider. Her net worth exceeds 6 billion dollars. Yet, the most widely recognized Korean American entrepreneur today is likely Michelle Kang.
After immigrating to the United States from Korea at age twenty, during her first year at Sogang University, Kang earned her degree in economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Yale. In 2008, she founded Cognosante, a healthcare IT company. When she sold the company in 2024 for more than 1 billion dollars, she was subsequently ranked 28th on Forbes’ 2025 list of America’s “Richest Self-Made Women,” with an estimated fortune of 1.2 billion dollars.
Michelle Kang’s current mission is to transform women’s sports into a sustainable global business. Those who know her describe her as “a person who is always perfectly prepared.” NBA legend Magic Johnson and NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman—both minority investors and strategic partners of the Washington Spirit, the women’s professional soccer team Kang owns—have said of her: “She holds her own even in the male-dominated world of sports.”
Her connection to soccer began serendipitously at an event held in the U.S. Capitol, and within just six years, she became the owner of three clubs: the NWSL’s Washington Spirit, France’s OL Féminin, and England’s London City Lionesses.
In 2022, she acquired the Spirit for what was then considered a bold price of 35 million dollars. Forbes now values the team at about 130 million. Kang firmly believes that in the near future, elite women’s clubs will be worth over a billion dollars. She has already invested at least 200 million dollars across club acquisitions, women-focused sports startups, and large-scale philanthropy.
Still, the business outlook remains uncertain. All 124 teams across North America’s four major men’s professional leagues are valued at over a billion dollars, having risen an average of 2,000 percent since Forbes began valuing franchises in 1998. By contrast, women’s soccer is still in its early stages. In 2024, the Spirit generated about 15 million dollars in regular-season revenue, while D.C. United, the men’s MLS team sharing the same stadium, earned about 90 million. Some critics argue that persistent issues such as wage inequality, limited media exposure, and diversity campaigns prove that women’s sports will never truly succeed, that its current popularity is driven more by social sympathy than by real demand. Kang vehemently rejects that notion, asserting that women’s sports are not charity, nor are they corporate DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. She is adamant that they are sound business.
Behind her achievements lies an extraordinary personal history: a spirited, headstrong childhood; the difficult decision to study abroad in the United States during Korea’s turbulent democratization of the 1980s; and a rapid career ascent through some of the world’s top firms, including Ernst & Young(one of the world’s “Big Four” accounting firms), TRW (a spacecraft developer), and Northrop Grumman(a leading defense contractor). During the rise of electronic medical records, she revitalized Northrop Grumman’s struggling health IT division and, amid the 2008 financial crisis, launched Cognosante (a company that provided technology and customer-experience solutions to government agencies to modernize health and public services) from a small office with just 700,000 dollars, her entire stake from selling Northrop Grumman shares. Sixteen years later, she sold the company for more than 1 billion dollars.
As the Spirit’s owner, Kang rapidly upgraded both the roster and management, building the team around star forward Trinity Rodman (daughter of 1990s NBA legend Dennis Rodman). Since 2022, she has tripled team revenue and increased average attendance to 14,000 per game. Her three clubs are now unified under Kynisca Sports International, headquartered in London, where she has implemented a “multi-club” model that centralizes scouting and player and coach development.
Kang has also played a key role in attracting sponsors such as AT&T and Google to the NWSL, leading to a landmark four-year, 240-million-dollar broadcast rights deal with CBS, ESPN, Ion, and Amazon Prime. American sports commentators often say that “Michelle Kang is the reason behind the rising tide of women’s professional soccer in the United States.”
