Meet Kim Ng, Major League Baseball’s first female general manager  (Today)

Kim Ng Has Been Ready for Years  (The New York Times)

Kim Ng finally -- finally! -- lands general manager job in Major League Baseball  (ESPN)

With opening day of the Major League Baseball season upon us, meet intrepid trailblazer Kim Ng, the General Manager of the Miami Marlins.  Ng is the first woman to serve as a “full-time general manager in any of the major men’s leagues in North America.”  In addition, she is the first Asian American GM. 

As a child, Ng played stickball in the streets of New York with her (mostly male) neighbors, then played softball at Ridgeway High School in New Jersey and at the University of Chicago. After writing her thesis on Title IX, federal legislation that outlawed gender discrimination in sports, Ng graduated with a public policy degree and took a front office job with the Chicago White Sox.  She then worked for the American League for a year before joining the Yankees as an Assistant GM and then the Dodgers as VP and Assistant GM.  Following that, she became the highest ranking woman in baseball operations as Senior VP of Baseball Operations for MLB.

Over the course of 15 years, Ng interviewed for 15 jobs as the GM (not the Assistant), and she was never offered the position.  Not until longtime friend and colleague Derek Jeter, Chief Executive and part-owner of the Marlins, called Ng did she get the job as the GM for an MLB team, Jeter’s Marlins.  As Sarah Spain from ESPN notes, perhaps Ng’s appointment was 15 years in the making--or perhaps it was 93 years in the making, since the first MLB GM was hired in 1927, and no woman was deemed capable of holding the position until 2020.  As Ng’s mother said in reaction to her daughter’s new job, “Long overdue.”