Marlins Make Kim Ng MLB’s First Female, Asian-American GM

Longtime baseball executive Kim Ng will make history as MLB’s first female and Asian-American general manager. The Miami Marlins announced her hiring on Nov. 13. 

She is the first woman hired to the general manager position for any team among any of the men’s professional sports leagues in North America. 

Ng, 51, has worked in baseball for over 30 years. She spent the last nine years as MLB’s vice president of baseball operations, and prior to that served as the assistant GM for both the New York Yankees — where she became the youngest person to ever hold the title — and Los Angeles Dodgers. Her first full-time role in the sport was as a special projects analyst for the Chicago White Sox. 

Ng’s teams have made eight postseason appearances, won six league championship series and three World Series titles. 

She had previously interviewed multiple times over the past 15 or so years for GM positions, becoming the first woman to do so when she interviewed with the Dodgers in 2005.

“I entered Major League Baseball as an intern and, after decades of determination, it is the honor of my career to lead the Miami Marlins as their next general manager,” Ng said in a statement. “We are building for the long term in South Florida, developing a forward-thinking collaborative, creative baseball operations made up of incredibly talented and dedicated staff who have, over the last few years, laid a great foundation for success. This challenge is one I don’t take lightly. When I got into this business, it seemed unlikely a woman would lead a major league team, but I am dogged in pursuit of my goals. My goal is now to bring  championship baseball to Miami.”

Marlins CEO Derek Jeter announced in October that the team’s longtime president of baseball operations, Michael Hill, would not return in 2021. The team qualified for the playoffs in 2020 for the first time since winning the World Series in 2003 — Don Mattingly was named National League Manager of the Year.