Training For Success: Athletics, Competition and Careers
Kim Ng
Kim Ng serves as Major League Baseball’s Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations & International Development. In this capacity, Ng oversees MLB’s efforts to propagate the game globally and assists the Strategic/International ownership committee and Business Development Group in its efforts to determine key areas to grow the game. Toward these goals, Ng also works with the front offices of the 30 Major League Clubs and many other baseball leagues and entities around the world. Prior to joining MLB’s Central Office, Ng was Vice President and Assistant General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers for nine years (2002-2011). With the Dodgers, Ng’s primary duties included assisting in all player transactions, making trades, signing free agents, player research, and overseeing the club’s arbitration efforts and pro scouting department. In 2004, she was the Club’s interim Farm Director. Before joining the Dodgers, Ng held the position of Assistant General Manager of the New York Yankees from 1998-2001, during which time the club won three World Series.
Ng is the second woman ever to hold an assistant general manager position with a Major League club and is the only woman to have ever interviewed for a General Manager position in any major professional sport. She began her baseball career with the Chicago White Sox before becoming the Director of Waivers and Records for the American League Office.
Ng was named to Forbes’ list of the Most Influential Minorities in Sports, Forbes’ list of the Most Influential Women in Sports, Adweek’s Most Powerful Women in Sports, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in 2017, and most recently to the Anti-Defamation League’s prestigious Sports Leadership Council. Ng, who grew up in the New York area, graduated from the University of Chicago, where she played softball and earned a degree in Public Policy.
Patricia Melton
Patricia Melton, the President of the innovative New Haven Promise scholarship and support program, has been an award winner within and outside the scope of athletic competition. An All-American track athlete at Yale University, Melton was also a U.S. Olympic Trials finalist before moving on to a highly successful career in the field of education. In 2007 she was selected as an NCAA Silver Anniversary Award winner (one of six nationally). Her alma mater awarded her with the George H.W. Bush Award in 2013, the first African American female to be selected.
Amber Cox
Amber Cox is Vice President of the Women’s National Basketball Association’s Connecticut Sun and National Lacrosse League’s New England Black Wolves. She is responsible for overseeing the overall business operation of both franchises, including marketing, broadcast, public & community relations, digital/social media, fan engagement as well as all revenue-generating activities including ticket sales and sponsorship.
Cox joined Mohegan Sun Sports after serving as the Chief Marketing Officer of Major League Soccer’s Houston Dynamo and before that, as the Associate Commissioner for Women’s Basketball for the Big East Conference.
Cox spent nine seasons with the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA. In her final two years with the franchise, she held the joint title of President and Chief Operating Officer, overseeing all business and basketball operations.
Recognizing her tremendous success and quick climb in the business industry the Phoenix Business Journal named Cox to its Forty-Under-40 Class of 2012.
Yesta Tuakli-Wosornu
Yetsa A. Tuakli-Wosornu, MD, MPH is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale School of Public Health, and a practicing Physiatrist in Yale’s Department of Orthopaedics. She competed on the Yale College track and field team, and as a post-collegiate athlete, represented the federal Republic of Ghana internationally in the women’s long jump. Appointed by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) governing board in 2014, Dr. Tuakli-Wosornu represents Ghana on IPC’s medical committee. This eight-member panel provides medical care and leadership to the 160 countries participating in Paralympic sport, including the Paralympic Games. As IPC’s Welfare Officer, she works with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to combat harassment and abuse among athletes with and without physical impairment. As a clinician-scientist, Dr. Tuakli-Wosornu treats patients with common musculoskeletal conditions such as osteoarthritis, and studies the biopsychosocial impact of physical activity on vulnerable populations. At Yale, she directs a Para and Adapted Sports research lab, where Yale medical students and University of Delaware engineering students work with the IPC and other groups to increase disability awareness, and high-quality adapted sports medicine scholarship through social, engineering and musculoskeletal research. Current studies include: ‘Acute and chronic musculoskeletal injury in Para sport: a critical review,’ Sport-related injuries in elite Para powerlifters: a prospective analysis of 1410 athlete-days at the Rio 2016 summer Paralympic Games,’ and ‘More than just a game: using wheelchair basketball to promote social inclusion and disability awareness at Yale.’ Dr. Tuakli-Wosornu’s goal is to produce work that promotes the wellbeing, independence and social esteem of persons with physical disabilities in resource-limited settings, by empowering this historically vulnerable segment of societies to take charge of their health through sports and movement.