Former Victoria’s Secret Angel Takes Up Unexpected Role for WNBA Champions

The 2025 WNBA season is off and running, and the defending champions haven’t just been active on the court; they’ve been busy off it, too.

On Thursday, reports surfaced that New York Liberty owners Joe Tsai and his wife, Clara Wu Tsai, sold shares in the team at a $450 million valuation, a record for a women’s professional sports franchise.

It's worth noting that the couple bought the Liberty in 2019 for between $10 million and $14 million. The deal won’t be finalized until the WNBA Board of Governors approves it, and the list of new investors wasn’t made public until Tuesday. 

Among the high-profile names are Samantha Lasry (daughter of former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry), Thasunda Brown Duckett (president and CEO of TIAA), Gabrielle Rubenstein (co-founder and CEO of Manna Tree Partners), Karen Finerman (television personality), Jack Ma (China’s eighth-richest person, worth $25.2 billion), and Karlie Kloss (model).

Kloss, 32, worked with Victoria’s Secret from 2013-15 before choosing to study at New York University. It didn’t take long for her to appear on the cover of 40 international editions of Vogue; she did it by 2019.

Today, she regularly appears in runway shows and is represented by several agencies, including The Society Management in New York, Models 1 in London, UTA in Los Angeles, and 2pm Model Management in Copenhagen.