Eighteen years after she first hustled onto the court for the AU women’s basketball team as an unrecruited first-year walk-on, Ohemaa Nyanin was on May 6 named the inaugural general manager of the WNBA’s newest franchise.
The Golden State Valkyries are the 13th club in a league that’s exploding in popularity, thanks largely to the excitement generated by rookie sensations Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever and Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky. Even though they won’t tip off until the 2025 season, the Valkyries—the first expansion team since 2008—have already received deposits for more than 17,000 season tickets, becoming the first women’s professional sports team to surpass that mark.
Nyanin, SIS-SOC/BA ’09, SPA/MS ’11, is responsible for building the team—hiring coaches and assembling a roster—during a time of unprecedented growth for the 28-year-old WNBA. In June, the league averaged 1.3 million viewers per game, tripling the previous season’s average. Meanwhile, two new franchises, Toronto and Portland, are scheduled to begin play in 2026.
“What brings me so much joy in taking this opportunity is it’s a blank canvas, and there are many elements that can go into building a masterpiece,” Nyanin said during her introductory press conference at the Chase Center in San Francisco, where the Valkyries will play.
During her first outing with the media, Nyanin also reflected on the unlikelihood of her ascension in the sport. “It’s a dream I never thought I would realize, to be honest,” she said. “I’m trying to wrap my mind around it.”
Nyanin brings to the role a deep knowledge of basketball, emotional intelligence, and the ability to connect with players—all necessary ingredients to succeed at the highest levels of the game. But unlike most current WNBA general managers, Nyanin has never played or coached professional ball.
Nyanin’s path to the helm of the Valkyries was marked by chance encounters and propitious circumstances, which formed stepping stones that took her closer to her dream. In basketball terms, at key moments throughout her life, the ball bounced her way —and Nyanin sank every shot.
Nyanin was in fourth grade when a fellow shopper in a suburban Maryland supermarket asked her mother if her unusually tall daughter played hoops. She had never touched a basketball, so the man—the parent of a child on a local team—invited Nyanin and her mom to a recreation center in Potomac that Friday afternoon.
Nyanin’s family had just moved to the DC area from the Philippines, and her mom thought the invitation might be a good opportunity for her daughter to get to know kids from their neighborhood. When Nyanin took the court for a practice session, “it ignited the fact that basketball was fun. Everybody made the team. I was the tallest kid, so I would throw the ball; it would brick; I would get my own rebound. Eventually I would pass it back out or keep shooting. I was head and shoulders above every kid.”
The social aspect of the game was also appealing.
“As I continued to grow within the sport, I was meeting very cool people from all different walks of life, all with different stories,” she says.
Nyanin’s father worked at the World Bank, so the family moved often. Nyanin, who was born in Accra, Ghana, spent parts of her formative years in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Chile, and the Philippines. “I went to three different high schools in three different countries, so my basketball training was disjointed.”
Because she didn’t play much high school ball in the US, she lacked the kind of on-court exposure that could attract the attention of college coaches and wasn’t recruited.
With no thought of playing college ball, Nyanin enrolled at AU, participating in the Summer Transition Enrichment Program (STEP) in the months before her first year. Run by AU’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion, STEP helps Eagles from multicultural or first-generation backgrounds develop a network of social and academic support that they can turn to throughout their college experience.
It turned out that all five first-year players on the AU women’s basketball team were also in STEP.
“I just went and played pickup with them, and [we] became friends,” Nyanin says. After a few games, the players asked Nyanin—who by then was six foot two—if she wanted to join the team.
“I didn’t know AU was Division I—didn’t know what the qualifications were to be a part of it,” Nyanin says. The season was already halfway over when she summoned the courage to meet with then coach Melissa McFerrin, who said the only opportunity to be part of the team was to be a walk-on. “I said, ‘Great—what does that even mean?’”
Nyanin started attending practices.
“There was a trial period,” but no formal tryout, she says. “They’d given out all their scholarships, but they still had room for additional players. That’s how I was able to be a part of the team.”
In February 2006, McFerrin put Nyanin onto the court for the first time as an Eagle in a matchup against the Bucknell Bison. Nyanin snared two rebounds. “I vividly remember that I had to guard their star player, and that was super daunting.”
Following Nyanin’s junior year, her parents encouraged her to stop playing to focus on her future career. Nyanin walked into McFerrin’s office with her mom to tell the coach she was leaving the team. “I really wanted to do international development, follow in my dad’s footsteps. [But] inside, I was really sad. I wanted to finish out what I had started with my teammates.”
At the outset of her senior year, Nyanin wondered what she’d do without basketball. She revived AU’s African Student Organization and ran unsuccessfully for student body president. Nyanin earned a pair of bachelor’s degrees in international relations and communications and applied to the graduate program in the School of Public Affairs.
Meanwhile, before the start of the 2009–10 season, McFerrin had left AU, and one of her assistants, Matt Corkery, was named her successor. In the spring of Nyanin’s senior year, Corkery told Nyanin she had one more year of eligibility and asked if she wanted to play during her first year of graduate school—on an athletic scholarship.
Nyanin hadn’t touched a basketball in a year and wasn’t in playing shape. That summer, Corkery and another member of the athletic staff met Nyanin in the gym. Nyanin got into game condition and had an outstanding fourth season with the team, starting in all but one of the 32 games and posting career highs in points, rebounds, and blocked shots. She was also named to the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll.
After Nyanin’s playing career was over in 2010, the athletic department hired her as director of operations for the women’s team as she worked toward her master’s in justice and public policy. She arranged for team travel and ensured players had meals and equipment.
“She [was] a great conduit between the team and the coaching staff,” Corkery says. “She understood what it meant to be a player, and she could help me convey messages to the team. Sometimes things that coaches ask for or want [from players] get lost in translation. O was very good at being able to see both sides.”
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, USA Basketball—the sport’s national governing body, which represents men’s and women’s teams and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee—practiced in AU’s Bender Arena. “Because I only had night classes, I was able to help during business hours to support their training camp,” Nyanin says. USA Basketball hired her in 2014.
As assistant director of the Women’s National Team, Nyanin provided logistical support, helping young players who competed domestically and internationally by driving them to and from airports and making sure they had whatever they needed to compete. Nyanin, who learned Spanish while living in Chile, also served as a translator at Spanish-speaking competitions. She accompanied Team USA to Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Summer Olympics and went with the World Cup women’s national team to Tenerife, Spain, in 2020.
“She’s very smart, very worldly,” says Carol Callan, director of USA Basketball’s women’s program from 1996 to 2021. “She has a great way of forming relationships with people. In our world, that’s maybe the most important thing.”
After four years with USA Basketball, Nyanin was ready to take a break in 2019 when Katie Smith, then coach of the WNBA’s New York Liberty, contacted her. Smith had worked with Nyanin through USA Basketball; she offered her a similar logistical role with the team as director of basketball operations.
In a 2023 interview with hoops website the Next, Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb praised Nyanin’s ability to connect with players. “She’s had to . . . figure out in a way how to communicate effectively with high-level athletes at different stages in their careers, from teen years into adulthood, and that in and of itself is a real skill—and that’s what really drew me to her.”
Three years after Nyanin joined the Liberty, the team elevated her to assistant general manager in 2022, which gave her a role in constructing the roster. Nyanin helped build a “super team” during the 2023 offseason, during which the Liberty acquired three stars—forward Jonquel Jones in a trade and guard Courtney Vandersloot and forward Breanna Stewart, the 2018 WNBA MVP, via free agency.
The Liberty lost to Las Vegas in the 2023 WNBA Finals—but Nyanin established herself as an ace.
By the time the WNBA announced it was expanding, Nyanin was well-known in women’s basketball circles. During the May press conference, Joe Lacob, owner of the Valkyries and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, said Nyanin emerged as the best candidate from a strong field. “We really looked far and wide,” he said. “We wanted someone we felt could be a great leader for our franchise.”
Ten members of the Valkyries organization interviewed Nyanin, and Lacob invited her and the other finalist to spend time at his home with members of the franchise to see if they were a fit with the team’s collaborative approach. “She passed with flying colors,” Lacob said.
Like Kolb, Lacob noted Nyanin’s ability to connect with younger players.
“She convinced me that she had a great understanding and knowledge of all the players who were coming up from the time they were 13, which is pretty amazing.” Lacob said the new franchise’s goal is to win a championship within five years.
Reflecting on her journey from AU walk-on to WNBA GM, Nyanin acknowledges the opportunities that have come her way—and her determination to make the most of them.
“I believe that I was in the right place at the right time and met every form of adversity with an inquisitive spirit and the will to succeed,” she says. “Most often people bet on my potential to be successful, and I worked every day to make sure they didn’t regret their decision. A third culture kid, walk-on-turned-scholarship athlete at AU is now the GM of the Golden State Valkyries? Yes, yes, she is.”