Billionaire Michele Kang has made a splash in women’s sports with her goal of professionalizing women’s soccer. She owns the Washington Spirit, the London City Lionesses, and OL Lyonnes, and in 2024 launched Kynisca, a women’s sports organization to power it all. Now, Fortune is the first to report, she’s launching the Kang Women’s Institute, an organization within U.S. Soccer’s Soccer Forward foundation. It promises to research the needs of female athletes, from their specific requirements for injury recovery and reentry after pregnancy to best practices for coaching girls in youth sports.
Kang started this work through her own organization; after buying three clubs, she noticed problems compared with men’s sports. “Why do we have more ACL injuries? Why don’t we have enough female coaches and referees?” she was asking after entering the space with the capital she earned from selling her health care IT company. Earlier this year, she merged Kynisca’s innovation hub with U.S. Soccer in hopes that the federation’s brand-name convening power would get researchers and study participants on board faster. In total, she’s committed $55 million to this work: $25 million for the new institute, with projects already in the works with UNC and Duke, and $30 million for specific programs for youth sports and coaching. Kang has previously announced her financial commitments and is announcing the launch of the new institute today.
