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Michele Kang Is the Billionaire Patron of Women’s Pro Soccer
By Kelli Luu | 10 Jun, 2025
The struggles of the fledgling women's pro soccer industry have drawn Michele Kang's passion for turning dysfunction into an opportunity for future success.
Imagine being able to just casually buy an entire soccer team. Tech entrepreneur and business woman Michele Kang is doing it because she saw something broken and was ready to help make it better.
Kang was born in Seoul to a mother who was a lawyer and member of parliament in South Korea and a father who was selected to attend university in the United States on a scholarship funded by the United Nations Korean Reconstruction Agency.
With extremely accomplished parents, excellence was the standard in the Kang household and the bar was set high for Michele.
She was at the top of her class and the only female student in her first year at Sogang University in Seoul.
After moving to the U.S. in 1981 Kang received her bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Chicago then later earned her master’s in public and private management at Yale.
Before making soccer headlines, Kang started her career in tech working her way up to vice president of the Health and Science Solutions unit at Northrop Grumman.
After resigning in 2008, she wanted to start her own company so she founded Cognosante to work towards modernizing health systems.
With her own business up and running, Kang stepped up and started to turn her head towards women’s soccer when scandals began to strike in the US National Women’s Soccer League in 2020.
In 2022 Cognosante reported over $236 million in revenue which solidified Kang’s position as a giant in tech, giving her the momentum to acquire majority stakes in the Washington Spirit and the first woman of color to own a national women’s soccer league.
By 2023 Kang expanded her vision, buying OL Lyoness and London City Lionesses, some of Europe’s most decorated clubs and launching Kyniska Sports, the very first multi-club ownership model that is focused on women’s football.
She also currently has a stake in John Textor’s Eagle Football Holdings, a high profile global sports investment group.
Since launching Kyniska Sports in 2024, she has continued to make a huge impact in women’s sports with multiple donations including a $30 million pledge to U.S. Soccer in order to build pipelines for coaches, referees, and aspiring athletes.
Today Michele Kang has a networth of $1.2 billion and this number truly reflects both her success in business as well as her commitment to creating a lasting change in women’s sports.
She was at the top of her class and the only female student in her first year at Sogang University in Seoul.
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