Tonya Antonucci, Commissioner

For over two decades, Tonya Antonucci has expressed her passion for women’s soccer as a player, coach, executive and fan. Now her dedication to the game continues as she serves as WPS’s first commissioner.

Antonucci was named WPS Commissioner on Sept. 4, 2007 after working as the CEO of Women’s Soccer Initiative, Inc. (WSII) for two and a half years.  At WSII, she successfully engineered the launch of a women’s professional soccer league in the United States by developing a viable business model, determining the demographics of the fan base, cultivating investor support and identifying team markets.

Prior to joining WSII, Antonucci spent more than seven years with Yahoo, Inc., where as she launched Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Fantasy Sports, and served as Director of those properties.  Subsequently, she was named General Manager of Yahoo's partnership with FIFA and oversaw the commercialization of the official, global web sites for the 2002 FIFA Men's and 2003 Women's World Cups.

In addition, Antonucci has worked as a product manager at Starwave, a software company funded by Microsoft’s Paul Allen; as a content producer on a precursor to ESPN.com; and as an assistant women’s soccer coach at Stanford University and Santa Clara University while working on an M.B.A. degree

A native of Everett, Wash. and a H.S. All-American and 1984 U.S. Jr. National Team member while at Mariner High School, Antonucci is a political science and economics graduate of Stanford University, where she played collegiate soccer, was named to the All-Far West team, and co-captained the Stanford team her senior year.

Antonucci resides in the Bay Area.

Mary Harvey, Chief Operating Officer

Mary Harvey brings her experience as a international soccer executive and Olympic Gold medalist to Women's Professional Soccer, where she was named Chief Operating Officer on Nov. 10, 2008.

Harvey was most recently the Director of Development at the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) in Zurich, Switzerland. When she signed on to join FIFA in 2003, Harvey became the first woman and first American to run a business division as a member of senior management at the international governing body. At FIFA, Harvey oversaw a team of 20 staff and 50 consultants globally to deliver programs and projects to develop the sport worldwide. Harvey also initiated the launch of several important projects for the development of women’s soccer in particular including a project that identified best practices in the development of the women’s game globally, staging nearly a dozen seminars involving over 150 countries. The findings from this project were presented at the 4th FIFA Women’s Football Symposium, a two-day event attended by 500 senior football executives from 200 countries.

Prior to her position at FIFA, Harvey worked for global consulting powerhouses, Deloitte and Accenture, and was a consultant to the CEO of the 1999 Women’s World Cup on issues related to ticketing, pricing and marketing strategies.

On the field, Harvey enjoyed an eight-year career with the U.S. Women’s National Team, playing from 1989-1996. She was the starting goalkeeper for the U.S. in the inaugural 1991 Women’s World Cup and a member of the 1996 Olympic gold medal-winning team in Atlanta. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of California at Berkeley’s Walter A. Haas School of Business and received her MBA from the Anderson School of Business at UCLA. She resides in San Francisco.

Vicki Veenker, General Counsel

Vicki Veenker brings a strong and diverse legal background to the office of General Counsel.  In addition to working with the League, she is Of Counsel to Shearman & Sterling LLP in its Menlo Park, California office.  The founding partner of the firm’s Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Group, she has extensive experience in intellectual property-related matters and is also a member of the firm’s Sports Group.  Veenker has been lead counsel to industry leaders in fields ranging from telecommunications to entertainment to biotechnology in patent, trademark, trade secret, and copyright cases.  She also counsels clients on licensing and other transactions.

Veenker is a federal court mediator, sitting on the mediation panel for the Northern District of California.  Previously, Veenker served as adjunct faculty member at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law and at Santa Clara University School of Law.  Currently, she is a Director of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley.

In 2002, Veenker was selected as one of the “Top 20 Lawyers Under 40” by California Law Business. She has been listed each year since 2001 as a “highly recommended” intellectual property attorney in Silicon Valley by the publisher of Global Counsel magazine in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers.  Ms. Veenker has also been recognized for several years as a Northern California Super Lawyer by Law & Politics and San Francisco magazine.

Veenker earned her J.D. degree at the Georgetown University Law Center where she was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law & Technology.  Prior to attending law school, Ms. Veenker was an Associate at the Kettering Foundation.   She holds a B.S. in Biochemistry and a B.A. in Political Science from Indiana University.

A resident of Palo Alto, Calif., Veenker is the mother of two soccer-playing daughters.