Business journalism Kimes's first position after college was at
Fortune Small Business Magazine in 2007. Her 2012 investigation entitled
Bad to the Bone exposed the unauthorized use of cement to repair bone tissue, with lethal consequences, for which she won the
Henry R. Luce Award. The
Columbia Journalism Review included her exposés among its business must-reads for 2012. In 2014, she received the Larry Birger Young Business Journalist Prize from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.
ESPN Kimes was offered a position by
ESPN editors in 2014 after she wrote an essay on Tumblr about a "bond between herself and her dad and the Seattle Seahawks." At
ESPN, she has written about young sports superstars, such as
University of Houston basketball player
Devonta Pollard. She has written profiles of NFL players
Aaron Rodgers,
Darrelle Revis,
Tyrod Taylor,
Antonio Brown,
Baker Mayfield, and
Michael and
Martellus Bennett, and wrote a feature on Korean
League of Legends star
Faker. She co-wrote with
Jeff Passan a piece on sexual harassment claims against former New York Mets GM
Jared Porter. Kimes was an active panelist on
Around the Horn and has appeared on
First Take,
Highly Questionable,
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz,
Pardon the Interruption, Debatable, and High Noon. She hosts an
NFL-focused
podcast entitled
The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny, a reference to her dog. From October 2019 until July 2020, Kimes hosted
ESPN Daily, a daily news podcast. In March 2025, Kimes called out the Trump administration during an appearance on
Around the Horn for removing an article honoring
Jackie Robinson's military service from the
Department of Defense website as part of its anti-
DEI agenda. In response to a campaign on
Twitter by sports media personality
Dov Kleiman calling for Kimes to be fired, Kimes responded that Kleiman "keeps posting weird stuff about me today."
Other work In 2019, Kimes was hired by the
Los Angeles Rams to be a
color commentator for their preseason football games. Kimes was a co-host, along with Amanda Dobbins, of
The Ringers
Big Little Live after-show about the
HBO series
Big Little Lies. She co-hosts
Love is Kimes with Davis Dennis Jr, a show about the Netflix series
Love is Blind. On November 29, 2020, Kimes helped celebrity chef
David Chang become the first celebrity to win the $1,000,000 top prize for his charity, Southern Smoke Foundation, and the fourteenth overall million dollar winner on
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, along with
Alan Yang as his supporter, via the phone-a-friend lifeline on the million-dollar question. == Personal life ==