Meet the CEO of US Polo Assn: He grew up in one of America’s poorest regions and now hosts Prince William and runs a $2.7 billion brand

Polo has long been called the “Sport of Kings”—a world of manicured lawns, champagne, and generational wealth. So you’d be forgiven for thinking the CEO of a $2.7 billion global heritage polo brand comes from old money connections, with an Ivy League education and a corner office inherited rather than earned. But U.S. Polo Assn’s CEO J. Michael Prince is none of those things. “I grew up in the middle part of the United States, southeastern Oklahoma—which is actually one of the poor parts of the country, there are four or five really poor parts of the United States, and that’s up there with them,” Prince tells Fortune. He’s not wrong. Nearly 600,000 Oklahoma residents (14%) currently live in poverty. Southeastern Oklahoma has been one of the most persistently deprived corners of America, where nearly one in four residents in some counties live below the poverty line. Today, Prince brushes shoulders with Prince William, the future King of England. For nearly the last decade, he’s been running U.S. Polo Assn. out its global headquarters in Palm Beach, overseeing the $2.7 billion brand spanning 190 countries, 1,200 retail stores, and 15 million social media followers. And he says it’s all thanks to taking up the “boring” job that millennials and boomers abandoned: accounting. “The only chance I have, coming from a small university, to really have a great business opportunity, was through public accounting,” Prince adds. It wasn’t his passion either, but it was his way in—and the job that few others want—that opened doors to some of the world’s most covetable brands. With a degree from the small regional university, East Central University, and then later a Duke MBA, he climbed his way to CFO of Nike Affiliates—overseeing a $4 billion portfolio including Converse, Cole Haan, Hurley and Umbro. It was his entry ticket to the C-suite of luxury fashion, first as the COO of Guess, then as the COO of U.S. Polo Assn in 2017. Just eight months