In celebrating Ada Lovelace Day, a worldwide blogosphere commemoration of pioneering women in technology and science, Arras People, the project management recruitment people, felt it was appropo to write about a baseball executive who has risen through the ranks after gaining her start in the business as a project analyst. Our honouree is Kim Ng, Assistant General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Barriers are broken slowly in America, whether its slavery, suffrage, integration, the glass ceiling or elected office. When they are broken, it resonates in a manner that can leave some onlookers wondering if a mountain has been moved without realising the foundation had been uplifted.
Kim Ng, the 2010 selection by How to Manage a Camel for Ada Lovelace Day, is moving mountains every day just by being one of the boys. Ng is the assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball (MLB). A graduate of the University of Chicago and standout on the school’s softball team, Kim knew the pitfalls of the “boys club” mentality of baseball executives when she got into the game, but fought tooth and nail to emerge as the sport’s leading female executive.
And it appears that this groundbreaking baseball lifer isn’t long for breaking more ground. Kim currently stands as the leading candidate to become the first female general manager in any major American sports team, having interviewed for the job with both the Dodgers in 2005 (Ned Colletti was hired and subsequently retained her as assistant GM), the Seattle Mariners in 2008 and the San Diego Padres in 2009. Moreover, in MLB, her work has put her in the position to be the lone female candidate in her sport for years to come.
As David A. Kaplan of Newsweek wrote in his 2006 feature of Ng, baseball personnel feel she is certainly qualified to assume a cherished role involving the negotiation of player salaries and assessment on-field talent and player development:
‘The opportunity to run a baseball team doesn’t happen often–GM vacancies are rare. But when the next one occurs, or perhaps the one after that, she’s in the best position to become the first female GM in a major U.S. sport–as well as an Asian-American pioneer. “What impresses me about Kim is she’s able to work in an environment where she’s basically the only one,” says Omar Minaya, general manager of the New York Mets and the game’s first Hispanic GM. “She’s as tough as anybody.”‘
Kim showed this toughness in her early days as a special projects analyst with the Chicago White Sox. In the hardening world of salary arbitration, baseball teams are forced to make the cases for their season salary bids against the agents and representatives for younger players not yet eligible to test the market for their own services. Dirty deeds are common, with both sides arguing for the betterment of their clients to save a few million dollars. Relationships between player and management have been known to suffer significantly after grueling arbitration battles. In a foreshadowing of firsts to come, Kim became to first female executive (not to mention the youngest person) to present a team’s salary arbitration case, this one regarding the case of pitcher Alex Fernandez. Her work in arbitration rebuttal is stellar, as she has earned high regard for going against baseball’s toughest agent, Scott Boras, and emerging successfully more often than not.
It was on to the front office of MLB’s American League, and then back to the franchise side when Kim joined the New York Yankees as assistant general manager in 1997. Through her assistance to Yankee GM Brian Cashman, Kim helped oversee a team that won four consecutive American League pennants and three World Series rings, narrowly missing a fourth before joining the Dodgers in 2001. Along the way, seemingly unwinnable arbitration cases were won for the Yankees, earning Kim promotions and increased regard.
An Asian American, Kim has had to be tough in other ways, too, as the boys club insensitivities reared its ugly head. In November 2003, Kim was inadvertantly dragged into a controversy when newly hired New York Mets executive Bill Singer asked her questions about her background. Allegedly, Singer later spoke in gibberish in a manner that made fun of the Chinese language. The Mets fired Singer a week later.
She was put in the position of becoming a standard-bearer against discrimination. “I was thinking, ‘Listen, boys, this is what I deal with all the time’,” Ng recalls. “I didn’t want it to become a big deal.”
She’s similarly ambivalent about gender’s making her stand out. She knows the feeling: it used to be at baseball meetings that heads would turn as if to ask, “Who is she ?” So Ng recognizes that a team might consider her as GM in part because she’s a woman. But she’s also ambitious and thinks she’s worthy of consideration, regardless of what’s motivating a team. “There are downsides of people having preconceived notions, but there are also the positives,” she says. “You have every right to use that.” Sounds like she’s a pretty skilled negotiator indeed.
An intriguing approach, I think. When Kim says “you have every right to use that”, it is a skillful way of turning a perceived element of facetiousness (we hired you because you’re a woman) on its face and using it to her advantage. Skilled negotiator? Sure. Militant? Hardly. Reality-driven? Absolutely. She knows what she is, but also knows that the perception is not the reality: the job that comes with the reality is.
As front office baseball executives go, an undeniable truth is that winning matters. When that maverick franchise is ready to put Kim Ng in charge as general manager, they’ll have taken on someone who – in 20 years of service to MLB teams dating to her days starting out as a projects analyst - has assisted with eight teams that have reached the postseason, six of which have reached the semi-finals of the playoffs, and three of which have won the league title. You put her in charge of my team whilst you keep your token boys clubber, and I’ll be happy to take my chances with Kim Ng any day of the week. Having earned her start in projects? You can bet project focussed people like us will appreciate her even more.
Arras People are proud to join fellow bloggers in celebrating Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Find out more by going to the Finding Ada wesbite today.
