Chad Millman, editor-in-chief of ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, has raided Bloomberg News to hire the young, award-winning Mina Kimes as a writer for an as-yet-untitled column in the magazine.
Kimes will be a senior writer covering “the intersection of commerce, business and sports fans” as well as working on narrative and investigative pieces.
Although the 28-year-old writer snagged a fair number of awards for investigative business stories, it was actually a piece on Tumblr that caught the attention of ESPN editors shortly before this year’s Super Bowl.
“She wrote about the bond between herself and her dad and the Seattle Seahawks,” said Millman. “It started making the rounds and caught the attention of our editors.”
Kimes never lived in Seattle but her Air Force father did. “I inherited my love for Seattle sports teams from him,” she said.
After graduating summa cum laude from Yale, she landed a job at Fortune where she had interned during college. While there she won the Henry R. Luce Award for a 2010 piece “Bad to the Bone” on a medical supply company.
She joined Bloomberg News in 2013, where she penned award-winning features on Sears CEO Eddie Lampert and Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelmen for Bloomberg Businessweek.
Earlier this year was the recipient of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers inaugural Larry Birger Young Business Journalist Prize, honoring journalists under 30. She also was named to Media Industry Newsletter’s Person to Watch list in 2012.
She said she was “surprised and also thrilled” when ESPN recruited her. “Turning a passion into a career is a dream come true.”