Rank #461
Thai Lee
Net worth $8.0B
IT provider · United States
- Born
- Nov 27, 1958
- Age
- 67
- Source
- IT provider
- Residence
- Austin, Texas
- Citizenship
- United States
- Marital status
- Divorced
- Children
- 2
- Education
- Bachelor of Arts/Science, Amherst College; Master of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Net worth over time
Biography
- Thai Lee is CEO of $15 billion (gross sales) IT provider SHI International, which has 15,000 customers, including Boeing and AT&T.
- Born in Bangkok, Lee grew up in South Korea and moved to the U.S. for high school before heading to Amherst for college.
- Her father, a prominent economist who traveled the world promoting his country's postwar development plan, was the first Korean to graduate from Amherst.
- Lee, also an alum of Harvard Business School, did stints at Procter & Gamble and American Express.
- Lee and her now ex-husband Leo KoGuan paid less than $1 million for a software reseller in 1989, the predecessor to SHI. Today she owns 60% while he owns 40%.
- SHI recently invested $20 million in a newly opened AI & Cyber lab where it tests out AI solutions for customers using NVIDIA's technology.
- Lee majored in both biology and economics, in part because her English was less than perfect and she wanted to avoid writing and speaking in class.
- Her Korean parents named her Thai because she was born in Thailand.