Thai Lee

SHI International CEO and co-founder Thai Lee is living the American dream. In 1989, this Korean immigrant and her then husband bought a failing IT provider for less than $1 million; today the company has $6 billion sales from 17,500 customers such as AT&T, Boeing and Johnson & Johnson . The daughter of a prominent Korean economist, she was born in Bangkok, Thailand but spent most of her childhood in Korea. She and her older sister moved to the U.S. for school when they were teens. She eventually enrolled at Amherst College, returned to Korea to work at an auto parts maker and save enough money for an MBA, and came back to the U.S. where she attended Harvard Business School. After stints at Procter & Gamble and American Express, she realized her goal of running her own company. SHI is now the largest female-owned business in the US and one of the largest minority-owned.