Mina Kimes is one of the rising stars at the Worldwide Leader in Sports. After becoming a mainstay on Highly Questionable, Kimes has embraced multiple roles at ESPN and has also appeared on Around The Horn, the Dan Le Batard Show and multiple other shows. Prior to joining ESPN in 2014, Kimes was a business and investigative reporter at Fortune Small Business Magazine and Bloomberg.
It’s that background that allows Kimes to stand out among her peers.
“The way I get stories is kind of interesting. It’s a mix of things,” she said, via Awful Announcing. “Some of them are my own ideas. Some of them are assignments. Many of them are this kind of gray area where ‘you know what would be a fun idea? What is eSports?’ I did a story about bat flips a few years ago, and that moment where I get to figure out what I think the story really is, that’s my favorite.”
Kimes, who is of Korean descent, was born on Sept. 8, 1985 in Omaha, Nebraska. She attended Yale, where she graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English. During her time at Fortune Small Business Magazine, Kimes won the Larry Birger Young Business Journalist Prize from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and the Front Page Award for her reporting. She has also received the Columbia Journalism Must-Read and AAJA National Award.
Kimes received her first offer from ESPN after writing an essay on Tumblr about a “bond between herself and her dad and the Seattle Seahawks.” Kimes is a huge fan of both the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners.
