Leadership Changes, COO Added to Minnesota Aurora team

Eagan –  With the tremendous success of Minnesota Aurora in its inaugural season in 2022, today the team  announced changes and additions to club leadership.  Jessica Poole is joining Aurora as the first Chief Operations Officer and Andrea Yoch has been named the chair of the board in addition to continuing as team President. 

Poole is an experienced athletics executive who will be charged with overseeing the buildout of the team’s front office and day-to-day operations of the club. Poole most recently served as deputy athletic director and chief operating officer for Chicago State University, where she provided leadership, vision, strategy, direction and management over professional and support staff. Her responsibilities included oversight of business operations, human resources, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), facilities, events, campus engagement and capital engagement. 

Poole has held a variety of roles at institutions ranging from Ole Miss to Dartmouth and currently holds leadership roles with both the Black College Sports Information Directors and the College Sports Communicators formerly College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), where she is the first African-American female to lead the organization. 

“I am thrilled to be joining Minnesota Aurora to help build out the vision of the Founders,” said Poole. “It is a huge honor and responsibility to be joining the club in this capacity and to work alongside the Board, front office staff and community owners  to live the community mission of Minnesota Aurora. What the club has accomplished in a short time is nothing short of impressive and I look forward to continued momentum and success as we grow the organization.” 

As part of the club’s community-owned roots, Minnesota Aurora also announced the addition of two new board members who were elected from the team’s 3080 community owners this winter Jamie Becker-Finn and Mai-Ahn Tran. Both Becker-Finn and Tran are community owners of the team and great community representatives. 

Tran is the Associate Vice President of Philanthropic Services at the Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundation, the state’s largest community foundation. She has more than 24 years of experience in nonprofit management, fundraising, donor relations and marketing and communications. Tran’s board service includes All Square, Raise the Barr  and the Minnesota Council on Foundations where she co-chairs the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee. She is a former Humphrey Policy Fellow at the University of Minnesota and holds a Certified Fund-Raising Executive (CFRE) certification through Boston University. 

Jamie Becker-Finn has served in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2016 and is currently Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Her policy work is focused on lifting up voices that are otherwise not heard and addressing systemic problems with an anti-racist lens. In addition to her legislative work, Finn is also an attorney and owns Makwa Coffee, an independent community-focused coffee shop in the city of Roseville. 

Minnesota Aurora is a pre-professional soccer team in the USL W League that plays at TCO Stadium in Eagan, MN. The team is community owned with 3080 investors.

In 2022, Aurora went undefeated in the regular season at 11-0-1 and made it to the Championship game where they lost to Tormenta SC. Aurora finished the season 13-1-1. The team was founded by a group of Twin Cities residents whose mission is to develop the next generation of women’s talent, both on and off the field. For more visit MNAurora.com.