October 16, 2025 • 23 mins
Michele Kang left her hometown of Seoul, South Korea, to pursue her education in the United States and went on to become one of the most influential figures in women’s soccer. What started as a chance investment in the Washington Spirit turned into a mission: empowering female athletes and elevating the women’s game worldwide. She has since expanded her reach to include teams in England and France, building a global network of women’s clubs. Kang appears on "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations." This was recorded April 2 in New York.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Michelle Can came the United States to get her education.
She's a native of South Korea. After she got her
education in the United States, she stayed here and became
very actively involved in the business world. Built a successful company,
sold it, and now she's very involved in women's sports,
and particularly women's soccer. I sat down with her to
talk about why she's so interested in revolutionized women's sports
(00:24):
and women's soccer. So let me ask you about how
you came to become a leading women's soccer team owner,
having had no experience as a soccer team player and
not having spent a lot of time in athletics before
you got into this.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Well, I was a good athlete, but not soccer. I
have to say it was by accident coincidence. I really
did not even know there was a professional women's soccer
league in the United States, let alone there was a
professional team in DC. And it was twenty nineteen when
the US women's national team won the World Cup, sort
(01:00):
of a celebration party on the Capitol and I was
invited and I got to learn about it, and since
then I was sort of convinced that I should join.
Initially as just a minority investor, and be a mentor
to a lot of young, incredible women. And when I started,
I never had an intention that I was going to
go run multi teams around the globe.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
How many women's sports teams have sprouted up in recent years,
but are they profitable?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Not yet?
Speaker 4 (01:27):
And you think they will be out presumably.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Absolutely, But I mean, I'd say to be fair, if
you look at a lot of men's teams, if you
actually take their media deals, there aren't that many companies
that are profitable from just game day operations. So we
as an emerging league, our media deal is not as
big as some of this more mature league. So we're
getting there because we're building teams, we're building attendance. But
(01:51):
even game day operations were on our way at least
break given in a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
So in an average women's soccer team game, let's say
how many fans will.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Show up, so that we play at a stadium called
Audi Stadium, the sellout is nineteen two hundred and fifteen.
Last two games, which were quarterfinal and semi final of
the playoffs, we sold out and then exceeded this sellout
because we had standing room only.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
How many women are on the.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Team twenty five or twenty six.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, they come largely from America.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
It used to be because in the US especially, we
had a draft system. So the typical path would be
you play high school, local academy or clubs, and then
you go to college and scholarships hopefully, and then you
get drafted from the college system. But now it's booming everywhere.
Clearly in Europe it's pretty significant, so there are a
(02:44):
lot more player movements, so we now have pretty significant
international players. But every team is limited to seven international players.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So I know from owning a sports team that only
one team takes a lot of energy and time.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So you decided after you bought the Washington Spirits to
buy some other soccer teams, So you bought stakes in
a team in England?
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yes, I bought a team called London City Linuses, and
that is the only one of the two teams in
the entire potentially Great Britain that are independent. Ninety nine
percent of the teams in Europe are part of the
men's team, but this is one of the only two
teams that was independent.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
So now you have two soccer teams, one in England
and one of the United States. So I would think
for most people that might be enough, but you decide
to buy a team in France as well.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yes, Olympic Leode Feminine is actually the best women's team
in the history of women's football in terms of how
many trophies the team has won. They are the eight
times champions of the European Pan European League and I
can't even count how many times they won the French
domestic lea the most successful team.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Hey, so now you have this team, the French team,
the English team, you have the American team, and then
you now have minority stakes in male soccer teams as well.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Yes, and which ones do you have?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So Crystal Palace in England and olympicly on a men's
team as well.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Okay, so now you have five.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It's a passive and that one is passive.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
You have three that you control.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Correct and actively managed.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Actively managed.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
As if that wasn't enough, you want to get into
the sportswear and shoe part of soccer as well.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
There are reasons why women's football or women's sports have
been somewhat behind than men's sports. There are a lot
of key elements that would make any sports successful were
not present. So, for example, if you look at women's
teams as team sports, their training manuals are borrowed from
men's training manuals. There's no independent training manuals designed and
(04:56):
develop for women. While women's body is not the same
as men, hormone, nutritions, sleep, they all work differently, and
women are seven eight times more likely to get an
ACL injury than men. But we train exactly the same
way we train men. So there has to be investment
in understanding female body and especially with the hormone the period,
(05:19):
how do they impact female athlete performance. Ninety four percent
of all science and medical research on athlete performance is
dedicated to men and the other six percent is not
dedicated to women. It includes women, So there's just absolute
lack of investment. So that has to be done. Now,
I am crazy and ambitious, but I can't invest if
(05:42):
I have only one team. You talk about profitability and
the size of the revenue, You cannot afford that level
of investment, which is absolutely necessary. You can't do it
if you own just one team, But if you have
multi teams, then you can centralize the resources and do
it once and make it available to everyone. If you
think about global scouting capabilities, each team doesn't have to
(06:05):
build global scouting everywhere. You just go watch one game
and you don't need to send five people to watch
the same thing. So there are some things that you
can build centrally that you can actually put the necessary
level of scale investment. You can't just buy teams and
invest in teams, build training center and stadiums and you
(06:25):
think that actually that's going to advance the women's football.
For example, the cleats, the boots, so they basically take
men's shoes, men's boots and then make it a little
narrow and little shorter and pink it. Well, apparently, I'm
told I'm not a scientist. The weight distribution when women
run is very different than men. The arches, our arches
(06:47):
are a little different than the men. So the shoes
the boots are one of the contributing factors for female injury.
So you need to invest in that. We don't get
enough media attention right women's sports. There is a media
company that's specializes that covers only women's sports. So I'm
investing in those things because the entire ecosystem has to
move together, not just the teams.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Is anybody from career call up and said, we have
some female soccer teams here and we'd like you to
buy one.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Nothing yet, nothing yet.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
But your ultimate plan with respect to what you're doing
in sports is to either buy more teams or to
just grow the value of the teams.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
What is your openmate game plan?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I mean I think there's sort of a multi step.
I want to professionalize women's sports, right. I don't want
people to think that some of my women's sports is
a charity or a corporate DEI project this is a
legitimate entertainment product and it is a business that is
going to be profitable, break even profitable and enterprise values
(07:48):
and so forth. So I want people to take the
women's sports seriously. So I'm on a mission to prove
that women's sports is a good business, right, and that
comes from professionalizing it and investing in it.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I want to get to the story of how you
be able to afford doing this. So it's a very
interesting story, but I think the best way to tell
it is to tell from the beginning. So you were
born where South Korea, and you were raised in what city, Soul,
and your parents were.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
My father was a professor. My mom was an elementary
school teacher turned politician. Later, my father was educated in
the United States. He got his graduate degree, so he
had relatively open minded about gender issues. Korea, clearly at
that time, was a very traditional society where girls were
(08:39):
supposed to do certain things, study certain things, and when
you graduate from college, then you get married and you
have children and all that. So there's sort of a norm,
the social norm that you're supposed to follow. But my father,
who had three girls, had a little different ideas because
he was exposed college in Japan and graduate school in
(09:00):
the US that girls can do whatever they want to
do in the future. And he instilled that idea in
US and I don't think my sisters really took up
that idea, but it just had a lot of impact
on me.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And then you had an opportunity to go to college
in the United States. And in those days, as I
understand it, Korean families saved up money so their daughters
could have money to get married. And so your parents
were saving up money for you to get married, and
then you said, I want to go to the school
in the United States.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
And what happened.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, So, especially at that time, unmarried young women going
to America alone was just unheard of and not acceptable, right,
No parents in the right mind would send an unmarried
young woman to a foreign country. So I had to negotiate.
So at that time, Korea was going through a lot
of political turmoil, sort of a democracy movement driven by
(09:58):
a lot of college students in college cam so the
colleges were shut down. So I kind of said, well,
you know, I want to go study, but the schools
are shut down. I can't study. And if you don't
let me go, then I may participate in these demonstrations
and my career, my future could be ruined.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Who knows.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
And I kind of use a little bit of a
threat but also a little bit of a negotiation, And
I said, give me just for one year's worth of
the tuition and living expenses, and after that I'll figure
it out, and when I start making money, I'll pay
back every penny. And when I get married, you don't
have to spend the time. I'll figure it out and
(10:40):
I pay everything back and some more.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
So they agreed to it.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Now, you went to the University of Chicago, But how
did you happen to pick the universe of Chicago as
opposed to many other universities.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Well at that time, actually I was studying economics in Korea,
and which was also kind of unheard of for girls
to study economics.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I said, I have to go there.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I have to learn economics where the real economics is taught.
So that was why I picked Eros of Chicago.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And So was it a culture shock for you to
kind of deal with all these Americans in Chicago?
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Or it wasn't a big problem.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
It was really not a big problem. I mean, I
just really enjoyed it being on my own. My parents
were not really rich or famous, but still the environment
or the circle that I grew up, I was always
so and so's daughter, so and so's granddaughter, so and
so's sister. I absolutely hated that I wanted to go
(11:35):
where no one knew who I was. So it was
like free at last, and I just enjoyed every minute
of it.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
When you graduated from you in Chicago, you decided to
go to business school and you picked the Yale School
of Management. Why did you pick that school of Management?
Which a very good one?
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
At that time, Yale actually was about ten years old,
and their mission and vision was not to create another
Harvard Business School, but rather very different, unique educational institution,
and that was mix both public and private management. And
the best part to me was it was a very
small class, about one hundred seventy or so at that time,
(12:12):
if I'm not mistake in Harvard had about eight hundred students,
and of course it was drawing upon the incredible faculty
members of Yale University, and I just really thought that
that was the best program for me.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
All Right, so you graduate from Yale School of Management,
what do you decide to do next?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
At that time, actually I had a three ten year
plan for my future career. First ten years I was
going to go into consulting, strategy consulting, because that's the
fastest way to learn every aspect of business. So I
thought the strategy consulting was the fastest way. But the
second half was going to be if you want to
be a leader and CEO of any organization like Fortune
(12:50):
five hundred company, it's not about whether you can build
the most sophisticated Excel spreadsheet and pricing strategy, but rather
how do you manage and how do you lead organizations?
Especially how do you move people sideways to get them
to do what you want them to do, people who
work for you, people who you work for, and that
you can do only in a fortune five hundred environment.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
And I didn't really like it.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
So I decided to spend the next decade in a
fortune five hundred company focusing on organizational kind of leadership.
And then the third decade was I was going to
take a shot at becoming a CEO of a fortune
five hundred company.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Okay, that's fairly ambitious schedule. So the first part you
want to do, go into consulting, im But so you
do that? How many years with Arthur D.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Little?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I did probably outn't know, four or five years or
maybe six years.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
And then you went to ernstign Young correct in the
consulting side. Yes, okay, so you did that for a while.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
And then you left ernstign Youong and you joined North
of Brummin, which to the average person is a defense company.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Were you in the Washington RAFA? Yes, you moved to
Washington area and you.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Were involved in their healthcare business or their technology business.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
So I joined as a strategy officer. But then I
really wanted to go run something. My goal was to
learn how to build an organization. How you build leadership.
So I asked to give me a P and L organization.
So they gave me this health business, which they thought
was so bad that I couldn't screw up right, So
(14:20):
she asked for it. We're going to give it to her.
If she doesn't do a good job, no harm done,
because it's already too very bad anyway.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
And that's how I ended up careousness.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
In healthcare for Northrop Brummen. But at that time, what
is your family saying back in career? Do they keep
calling or saying, now you're going to come back?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Well, then they kind of gave up on me, and
they probably had no idea what I was doing. And
you know, at that time, especially in Asia or you
know even in the US at that time, women go
into the business world or get an advanced degree. You're
either a lawyer or accountant. I was none of those, right,
(14:58):
So they kind of gave up understanding what I was doing.
But somehow I wasn't doing too badly, so they're like, okay,
she's okay.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So at some point you decide I'm going to be
my own boss and entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It was hard, but it was easy at that time.
President Bush forty three declared that every American who wants
to have an electronic medical record will have one by
twenty fourteen. So he put his stakes in the ground
and start investing in all the doctors and hospitals implementing
electronic medical records. So the boom was kind of happening,
(15:33):
the IT investment, And when you're in the middle of that,
you get that bug and you can see like how
the dots could be connected.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Whenever you start a company, you have to get some
capital to pay people and so forth.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
So where did your capital come from?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So I certainly had offers, But you know, I've been
saying this to a lot of people as well, that
I did not take any external capital.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
I literally bootstrapped.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I think if I took external capital, if I were them,
I would not have let me take the kind of
risks that I took. So I knew that, so I
didn't want to do that to them.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The name of the company was what cogni sante What
does that mean?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So that means that you know something about health healthcare.
Sante means health in French.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
So you were doing consulting and effect or helping companies
in the healthcare world.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Ultimately it reduced the costs and improve the care and
so for But using technology, every doctor you visit, if
you want to get a second opinion, you have to
go get your MRIs and X rays all over again
for various reasons because it's different hospital systems, insurance purposes
and all that. But if you can have actually interoperable
IT system where all is, whether it's a picture or
(16:45):
doctor's notes, could be shared in real time or elect
electronic form, you don't have to take another MRI. So
it's a really efficient flow electronic flow of medical records, pictures.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Prescriptions and so and all that. So interroperability.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
What year did you start your company?
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Technically two thousand and eight, right before the market crashed.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yes, okay, two thousand and eight, and then you sold
it last year twenty twenty four two accenture, I think
it was, Yes, So you sold it, walked away, started
a company called Kanishka.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Can you tell us what that does?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So that's the globally first multi club organization that includes
only women's soccer team or football teams. There are a
lot of examples on the men's side, City Football Group,
Red Bull, Redbird, all that, but This is the first
on women's side, and as we've been talking about, I
own on multiple teams and I wanted to kind of
(17:43):
create that synergy and economist of scale and scope.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So it's the.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
First in the world. And it's named after a Spartan
princess who lived in BC three hundred plus years. She
was a princess very much into horseback riding and she
wanted to compete in the Olympics and the chariot racing
was an Olympic game, but women were not allowed to compete.
(18:10):
Instead of complaining, she found out a loophole which was
at that time chariot racing. The medals were awarded not
to the racers but to the owners of the horses,
and she went out and hired a whole bunch of
male chariot racers and had them compete and she went
to gold medals.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
So do you get as much pleasure out of what
you're doing in soccer as you did in building your company.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, I think it's probably a little different, But yes,
I'm enjoying it. Although I have to say every weekend
I have to watch just about even the seasons are
not quite the same, and they're not quite aligned. But
every weekend when all three teams watch, I don't think
I'm going to live up my natural lifespan because every
(18:55):
weekend I have to watch three games.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
It's just like nail biting.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
So you've been a bit of a leader in being
an external investor in a women's soccer team, and let's
say France and in England, do you think other women
and or men are going to start investing external investors
into these kind of teams.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So when I first arrived in England and France, everyone
felt very badly for me, and they thought I was
going to fail miserably. How can you do this when
you don't have sort of the brand equity to leverage
from men's team or in communities like Leone and so forth.
But now I can tell you that some of these
(19:35):
Premier League teams and some of the top division teams,
they're not necessarily spinning off the team like what I've
done in Leone, we totally spun off the women's team
from men's team. But now some of the teams are
spinning up women's teams inside their mothership and they're actually
(19:56):
a recruiting investor separately. So Chelsea is another sample, They
actually separated women's team and they have separate investor group.
Some of the teams are now following.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So when you go to the games in Washington or
Paris or London, are you fans coming up to you
for photos?
Speaker 4 (20:13):
Selfies?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
For those people that are not very knowledgeab about sports,
why is it more exciting to watch a women's soccer
game than a men's soccer game?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Well, I think you could argue it's a preference, But
I think women's game, I think people will tell you
they're very different. One could argue there's a lot more
actually technical, in my opinion, sophistication as opposed to pure
physical strength. And also the environment in which you play
(20:43):
men versus women, especially if you've been to a game
in Europe, there's just clear contrast between the men's game
and women's game.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So right now, as you look at your professional life,
it's buying sports teams, a lot of them women, and
helping with equipment other things. And do you expect about
being buying media related things or other kinds of things
that ancillary to the sports.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
As I said, I bought the cleats, the boots female
that designed specifically for female media company covering only media
company right now, I'm working on actually data, so all
the tools for the coaches and the technical staff and
all that, so using it of course AI, but so data,
which is also my background. So I'm investing in some
(21:28):
of those type of things. But ecosystem has to go
go in together, so I'm investing in that as well.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Now people come to me all the time now and say,
if you bought a sports team, maybe you'll buy this
team or that team. And I get a lot of
offers in the women's sports area, So should I invest
in volleyball, softball, ice hockey? Any views on those as
women's sports.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
My recommendation to everyone is don't wait until it looks
like it's going to take off, because it's too late, right,
So you need to go in. You need to have
in something that you believe in when no one else
is believing in it, and that's the time to go
in as oppose when everyone else is this is the
greatest thing since slice.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Spread And would you encourage other women to get involved
in women's sports as owners?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Absolutely, And I think that's one of the things that
I'm hoping to achieve while I'm investing that. If you
look at actually the even women's sports right now, especially
in the US, quite a few women have come in.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So any more plans anything else you want to do
with your professional career? At this point, You've got sports teams,
you've built a great successful company, You're involved in philanthropy.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I think I've got my hands full, and so I
still this is all work in progress, right, So I
want to make sure that this is a legitimate, real
business that's not charity. That means that there's going to
be significant revenue stream and the break even and all that.
A business discipline. So I'm in that process. Also investing
(22:56):
in women's health and women's performance all that, so all
the different aspects, and I really I'm doing that also
because there are just so many female successful people with
lots of money and resources. I want them to all join.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Tell me, are you ever tempted to go try to
start another company like Cognisante?
Speaker 4 (23:17):
No, you're done with that.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I'm done, okay, I don't look back, I look forward.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
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wherever you listen.
Michelle Can came the United States to get her education.
She's a native of South Korea. After she got her
education in the United States, she stayed here and became
very actively involved in the business world. Built a successful company,
sold it, and now she's very involved in women's sports,
and particularly women's soccer. I sat down with her to
talk about why she's so interested in revolutionized women's sports
(00:24):
and women's soccer. So let me ask you about how
you came to become a leading women's soccer team owner,
having had no experience as a soccer team player and
not having spent a lot of time in athletics before
you got into this.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Well, I was a good athlete, but not soccer. I
have to say it was by accident coincidence. I really
did not even know there was a professional women's soccer
league in the United States, let alone there was a
professional team in DC. And it was twenty nineteen when
the US women's national team won the World Cup, sort
(01:00):
of a celebration party on the Capitol and I was
invited and I got to learn about it, and since
then I was sort of convinced that I should join.
Initially as just a minority investor, and be a mentor
to a lot of young, incredible women. And when I started,
I never had an intention that I was going to
go run multi teams around the globe.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
How many women's sports teams have sprouted up in recent years,
but are they profitable?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Not yet?
Speaker 4 (01:27):
And you think they will be out presumably.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Absolutely, But I mean, I'd say to be fair, if
you look at a lot of men's teams, if you
actually take their media deals, there aren't that many companies
that are profitable from just game day operations. So we
as an emerging league, our media deal is not as
big as some of this more mature league. So we're
getting there because we're building teams, we're building attendance. But
(01:51):
even game day operations were on our way at least
break given in a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
So in an average women's soccer team game, let's say
how many fans will.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Show up, so that we play at a stadium called
Audi Stadium, the sellout is nineteen two hundred and fifteen.
Last two games, which were quarterfinal and semi final of
the playoffs, we sold out and then exceeded this sellout
because we had standing room only.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
How many women are on the.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Team twenty five or twenty six.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, they come largely from America.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
It used to be because in the US especially, we
had a draft system. So the typical path would be
you play high school, local academy or clubs, and then
you go to college and scholarships hopefully, and then you
get drafted from the college system. But now it's booming everywhere.
Clearly in Europe it's pretty significant, so there are a
(02:44):
lot more player movements, so we now have pretty significant
international players. But every team is limited to seven international players.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So I know from owning a sports team that only
one team takes a lot of energy and time.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So you decided after you bought the Washington Spirits to
buy some other soccer teams, So you bought stakes in
a team in England?
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yes, I bought a team called London City Linuses, and
that is the only one of the two teams in
the entire potentially Great Britain that are independent. Ninety nine
percent of the teams in Europe are part of the
men's team, but this is one of the only two
teams that was independent.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
So now you have two soccer teams, one in England
and one of the United States. So I would think
for most people that might be enough, but you decide
to buy a team in France as well.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yes, Olympic Leode Feminine is actually the best women's team
in the history of women's football in terms of how
many trophies the team has won. They are the eight
times champions of the European Pan European League and I
can't even count how many times they won the French
domestic lea the most successful team.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Hey, so now you have this team, the French team,
the English team, you have the American team, and then
you now have minority stakes in male soccer teams as well.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Yes, and which ones do you have?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
So Crystal Palace in England and olympicly on a men's
team as well.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Okay, so now you have five.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It's a passive and that one is passive.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
You have three that you control.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Correct and actively managed.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Actively managed.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
As if that wasn't enough, you want to get into
the sportswear and shoe part of soccer as well.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
There are reasons why women's football or women's sports have
been somewhat behind than men's sports. There are a lot
of key elements that would make any sports successful were
not present. So, for example, if you look at women's
teams as team sports, their training manuals are borrowed from
men's training manuals. There's no independent training manuals designed and
(04:56):
develop for women. While women's body is not the same
as men, hormone, nutritions, sleep, they all work differently, and
women are seven eight times more likely to get an
ACL injury than men. But we train exactly the same
way we train men. So there has to be investment
in understanding female body and especially with the hormone the period,
(05:19):
how do they impact female athlete performance. Ninety four percent
of all science and medical research on athlete performance is
dedicated to men and the other six percent is not
dedicated to women. It includes women, So there's just absolute
lack of investment. So that has to be done. Now,
I am crazy and ambitious, but I can't invest if
(05:42):
I have only one team. You talk about profitability and
the size of the revenue, You cannot afford that level
of investment, which is absolutely necessary. You can't do it
if you own just one team, But if you have
multi teams, then you can centralize the resources and do
it once and make it available to everyone. If you
think about global scouting capabilities, each team doesn't have to
(06:05):
build global scouting everywhere. You just go watch one game
and you don't need to send five people to watch
the same thing. So there are some things that you
can build centrally that you can actually put the necessary
level of scale investment. You can't just buy teams and
invest in teams, build training center and stadiums and you
(06:25):
think that actually that's going to advance the women's football.
For example, the cleats, the boots, so they basically take
men's shoes, men's boots and then make it a little
narrow and little shorter and pink it. Well, apparently, I'm
told I'm not a scientist. The weight distribution when women
run is very different than men. The arches, our arches
(06:47):
are a little different than the men. So the shoes
the boots are one of the contributing factors for female injury.
So you need to invest in that. We don't get
enough media attention right women's sports. There is a media
company that's specializes that covers only women's sports. So I'm
investing in those things because the entire ecosystem has to
move together, not just the teams.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Is anybody from career call up and said, we have
some female soccer teams here and we'd like you to
buy one.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Nothing yet, nothing yet.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
But your ultimate plan with respect to what you're doing
in sports is to either buy more teams or to
just grow the value of the teams.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
What is your openmate game plan?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I mean I think there's sort of a multi step.
I want to professionalize women's sports, right. I don't want
people to think that some of my women's sports is
a charity or a corporate DEI project this is a
legitimate entertainment product and it is a business that is
going to be profitable, break even profitable and enterprise values
(07:48):
and so forth. So I want people to take the
women's sports seriously. So I'm on a mission to prove
that women's sports is a good business, right, and that
comes from professionalizing it and investing in it.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I want to get to the story of how you
be able to afford doing this. So it's a very
interesting story, but I think the best way to tell
it is to tell from the beginning. So you were
born where South Korea, and you were raised in what city, Soul,
and your parents were.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
My father was a professor. My mom was an elementary
school teacher turned politician. Later, my father was educated in
the United States. He got his graduate degree, so he
had relatively open minded about gender issues. Korea, clearly at
that time, was a very traditional society where girls were
(08:39):
supposed to do certain things, study certain things, and when
you graduate from college, then you get married and you
have children and all that. So there's sort of a norm,
the social norm that you're supposed to follow. But my father,
who had three girls, had a little different ideas because
he was exposed college in Japan and graduate school in
(09:00):
the US that girls can do whatever they want to
do in the future. And he instilled that idea in
US and I don't think my sisters really took up
that idea, but it just had a lot of impact
on me.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And then you had an opportunity to go to college
in the United States. And in those days, as I
understand it, Korean families saved up money so their daughters
could have money to get married. And so your parents
were saving up money for you to get married, and
then you said, I want to go to the school
in the United States.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
And what happened.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, So, especially at that time, unmarried young women going
to America alone was just unheard of and not acceptable, right,
No parents in the right mind would send an unmarried
young woman to a foreign country. So I had to negotiate.
So at that time, Korea was going through a lot
of political turmoil, sort of a democracy movement driven by
(09:58):
a lot of college students in college cam so the
colleges were shut down. So I kind of said, well,
you know, I want to go study, but the schools
are shut down. I can't study. And if you don't
let me go, then I may participate in these demonstrations
and my career, my future could be ruined.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Who knows.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
And I kind of use a little bit of a
threat but also a little bit of a negotiation, And
I said, give me just for one year's worth of
the tuition and living expenses, and after that I'll figure
it out, and when I start making money, I'll pay
back every penny. And when I get married, you don't
have to spend the time. I'll figure it out and
(10:40):
I pay everything back and some more.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
So they agreed to it.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Now, you went to the University of Chicago, But how
did you happen to pick the universe of Chicago as
opposed to many other universities.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Well at that time, actually I was studying economics in Korea,
and which was also kind of unheard of for girls
to study economics.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I said, I have to go there.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I have to learn economics where the real economics is taught.
So that was why I picked Eros of Chicago.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And So was it a culture shock for you to
kind of deal with all these Americans in Chicago?
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Or it wasn't a big problem.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
It was really not a big problem. I mean, I
just really enjoyed it being on my own. My parents
were not really rich or famous, but still the environment
or the circle that I grew up, I was always
so and so's daughter, so and so's granddaughter, so and
so's sister. I absolutely hated that I wanted to go
(11:35):
where no one knew who I was. So it was
like free at last, and I just enjoyed every minute
of it.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
When you graduated from you in Chicago, you decided to
go to business school and you picked the Yale School
of Management. Why did you pick that school of Management?
Which a very good one?
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
At that time, Yale actually was about ten years old,
and their mission and vision was not to create another
Harvard Business School, but rather very different, unique educational institution,
and that was mix both public and private management. And
the best part to me was it was a very
small class, about one hundred seventy or so at that time,
(12:12):
if I'm not mistake in Harvard had about eight hundred students,
and of course it was drawing upon the incredible faculty
members of Yale University, and I just really thought that
that was the best program for me.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
All Right, so you graduate from Yale School of Management,
what do you decide to do next?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
At that time, actually I had a three ten year
plan for my future career. First ten years I was
going to go into consulting, strategy consulting, because that's the
fastest way to learn every aspect of business. So I
thought the strategy consulting was the fastest way. But the
second half was going to be if you want to
be a leader and CEO of any organization like Fortune
(12:50):
five hundred company, it's not about whether you can build
the most sophisticated Excel spreadsheet and pricing strategy, but rather
how do you manage and how do you lead organizations?
Especially how do you move people sideways to get them
to do what you want them to do, people who
work for you, people who you work for, and that
you can do only in a fortune five hundred environment.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
And I didn't really like it.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
So I decided to spend the next decade in a
fortune five hundred company focusing on organizational kind of leadership.
And then the third decade was I was going to
take a shot at becoming a CEO of a fortune
five hundred company.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Okay, that's fairly ambitious schedule. So the first part you
want to do, go into consulting, im But so you
do that? How many years with Arthur D.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Little?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I did probably outn't know, four or five years or
maybe six years.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
And then you went to ernstign Young correct in the
consulting side. Yes, okay, so you did that for a while.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
And then you left ernstign Youong and you joined North
of Brummin, which to the average person is a defense company.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Were you in the Washington RAFA? Yes, you moved to
Washington area and you.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Were involved in their healthcare business or their technology business.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
So I joined as a strategy officer. But then I
really wanted to go run something. My goal was to
learn how to build an organization. How you build leadership.
So I asked to give me a P and L organization.
So they gave me this health business, which they thought
was so bad that I couldn't screw up right, So
(14:20):
she asked for it. We're going to give it to her.
If she doesn't do a good job, no harm done,
because it's already too very bad anyway.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
And that's how I ended up careousness.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
In healthcare for Northrop Brummen. But at that time, what
is your family saying back in career? Do they keep
calling or saying, now you're going to come back?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Well, then they kind of gave up on me, and
they probably had no idea what I was doing. And
you know, at that time, especially in Asia or you
know even in the US at that time, women go
into the business world or get an advanced degree. You're
either a lawyer or accountant. I was none of those, right,
(14:58):
So they kind of gave up understanding what I was doing.
But somehow I wasn't doing too badly, so they're like, okay,
she's okay.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So at some point you decide I'm going to be
my own boss and entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It was hard, but it was easy at that time.
President Bush forty three declared that every American who wants
to have an electronic medical record will have one by
twenty fourteen. So he put his stakes in the ground
and start investing in all the doctors and hospitals implementing
electronic medical records. So the boom was kind of happening,
(15:33):
the IT investment, And when you're in the middle of that,
you get that bug and you can see like how
the dots could be connected.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Whenever you start a company, you have to get some
capital to pay people and so forth.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
So where did your capital come from?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So I certainly had offers, But you know, I've been
saying this to a lot of people as well, that
I did not take any external capital.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
I literally bootstrapped.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I think if I took external capital, if I were them,
I would not have let me take the kind of
risks that I took. So I knew that, so I
didn't want to do that to them.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The name of the company was what cogni sante What
does that mean?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So that means that you know something about health healthcare.
Sante means health in French.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
So you were doing consulting and effect or helping companies
in the healthcare world.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Ultimately it reduced the costs and improve the care and
so for But using technology, every doctor you visit, if
you want to get a second opinion, you have to
go get your MRIs and X rays all over again
for various reasons because it's different hospital systems, insurance purposes
and all that. But if you can have actually interoperable
IT system where all is, whether it's a picture or
(16:45):
doctor's notes, could be shared in real time or elect
electronic form, you don't have to take another MRI. So
it's a really efficient flow electronic flow of medical records, pictures.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Prescriptions and so and all that. So interroperability.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
What year did you start your company?
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Technically two thousand and eight, right before the market crashed.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yes, okay, two thousand and eight, and then you sold
it last year twenty twenty four two accenture, I think
it was, Yes, So you sold it, walked away, started
a company called Kanishka.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Can you tell us what that does?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So that's the globally first multi club organization that includes
only women's soccer team or football teams. There are a
lot of examples on the men's side, City Football Group,
Red Bull, Redbird, all that, but This is the first
on women's side, and as we've been talking about, I
own on multiple teams and I wanted to kind of
(17:43):
create that synergy and economist of scale and scope.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So it's the.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
First in the world. And it's named after a Spartan
princess who lived in BC three hundred plus years. She
was a princess very much into horseback riding and she
wanted to compete in the Olympics and the chariot racing
was an Olympic game, but women were not allowed to compete.
(18:10):
Instead of complaining, she found out a loophole which was
at that time chariot racing. The medals were awarded not
to the racers but to the owners of the horses,
and she went out and hired a whole bunch of
male chariot racers and had them compete and she went
to gold medals.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
So do you get as much pleasure out of what
you're doing in soccer as you did in building your company.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, I think it's probably a little different, But yes,
I'm enjoying it. Although I have to say every weekend
I have to watch just about even the seasons are
not quite the same, and they're not quite aligned. But
every weekend when all three teams watch, I don't think
I'm going to live up my natural lifespan because every
(18:55):
weekend I have to watch three games.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
It's just like nail biting.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
So you've been a bit of a leader in being
an external investor in a women's soccer team, and let's
say France and in England, do you think other women
and or men are going to start investing external investors
into these kind of teams.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So when I first arrived in England and France, everyone
felt very badly for me, and they thought I was
going to fail miserably. How can you do this when
you don't have sort of the brand equity to leverage
from men's team or in communities like Leone and so forth.
But now I can tell you that some of these
(19:35):
Premier League teams and some of the top division teams,
they're not necessarily spinning off the team like what I've
done in Leone, we totally spun off the women's team
from men's team. But now some of the teams are
spinning up women's teams inside their mothership and they're actually
(19:56):
a recruiting investor separately. So Chelsea is another sample, They
actually separated women's team and they have separate investor group.
Some of the teams are now following.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So when you go to the games in Washington or
Paris or London, are you fans coming up to you
for photos?
Speaker 4 (20:13):
Selfies?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
For those people that are not very knowledgeab about sports,
why is it more exciting to watch a women's soccer
game than a men's soccer game?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Well, I think you could argue it's a preference, But
I think women's game, I think people will tell you
they're very different. One could argue there's a lot more
actually technical, in my opinion, sophistication as opposed to pure
physical strength. And also the environment in which you play
(20:43):
men versus women, especially if you've been to a game
in Europe, there's just clear contrast between the men's game
and women's game.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So right now, as you look at your professional life,
it's buying sports teams, a lot of them women, and
helping with equipment other things. And do you expect about
being buying media related things or other kinds of things
that ancillary to the sports.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
As I said, I bought the cleats, the boots female
that designed specifically for female media company covering only media
company right now, I'm working on actually data, so all
the tools for the coaches and the technical staff and
all that, so using it of course AI, but so data,
which is also my background. So I'm investing in some
(21:28):
of those type of things. But ecosystem has to go
go in together, so I'm investing in that as well.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Now people come to me all the time now and say,
if you bought a sports team, maybe you'll buy this
team or that team. And I get a lot of
offers in the women's sports area, So should I invest
in volleyball, softball, ice hockey? Any views on those as
women's sports.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
My recommendation to everyone is don't wait until it looks
like it's going to take off, because it's too late, right,
So you need to go in. You need to have
in something that you believe in when no one else
is believing in it, and that's the time to go
in as oppose when everyone else is this is the
greatest thing since slice.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Spread And would you encourage other women to get involved
in women's sports as owners?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Absolutely, And I think that's one of the things that
I'm hoping to achieve while I'm investing that. If you
look at actually the even women's sports right now, especially
in the US, quite a few women have come in.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So any more plans anything else you want to do
with your professional career? At this point, You've got sports teams,
you've built a great successful company, You're involved in philanthropy.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I think I've got my hands full, and so I
still this is all work in progress, right, So I
want to make sure that this is a legitimate, real
business that's not charity. That means that there's going to
be significant revenue stream and the break even and all that.
A business discipline. So I'm in that process. Also investing
(22:56):
in women's health and women's performance all that, so all
the different aspects, and I really I'm doing that also
because there are just so many female successful people with
lots of money and resources. I want them to all join.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Tell me, are you ever tempted to go try to
start another company like Cognisante?
Speaker 4 (23:17):
No, you're done with that.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I'm done, okay, I don't look back, I look forward.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
wherever you listen.
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