Nearly three years before Cleveland’s new WNBA team takes the court, the franchise has made its first official hire.

Cleveland WNBA announced Tuesday that Allison Howard will be the team’s first president. Howard is currently the executive vice president and chief commercial officer for Rock Entertainment Group and the Cleveland Cavaliers, a role she will continue through the end of the 2025-26 NBA season while transitioning into operations for the WNBA team.

This is Howard’s second foray into leading an expansion team. She was also the first president of the NWSL’s Kansas City Current, where she oversaw business operations and secured naming rights for the Current’s stadium, the first soccer stadium built specifically for a professional women’s team.

“That was historic, and it’s so special, and I’m so proud of everything that was built there,” Howard told The Athletic. “This is quite a bit different, though. The NWSL is standalone. Kansas City Current was a standalone. Those are owners that had no sports experience whatsoever. Now we have Dan Gilbert, who owns multiple sports teams and has been doing so for multiple decades.

“His guidance and his vision, and quite frankly, his ability to give us any resource that we possibly need in order to make sure that we are providing the best experience for our players, for our fans and for the community is unlike anything I have ever experienced in sports.”

The Cleveland WNBA team will fall under an ownership umbrella that also includes the Cavaliers (NBA), Charge (G League) and Monsters (AHL). Part of Howard’s responsibility will be creating a brand for the WNBA franchise that distinguishes itself from the existing teams.

The league’s 16th team, which was officially announced as an expansion city on June 30, has a long runway ahead of its debut in 2028 — a “long orange runway,” as Howard dubbed it. It is taking advantage of the lead-up to ingratiate the team within the community and seek out feedback from the WNBA, other team officials, and Cleveland itself.

The organization has held youth clinics, including an all-girls camp in Aurora, Ohio, where all of the participants and coaches dressed up in WNBA orange. The summer All For Fun Tour is a mobile trailer that stops throughout Northeast Ohio with giveaways and special guests and promotes physical activity, especially for young girls. Howard says she wants fans to feel ownership of the creation of the team and the brand identity, and she’s listening to their priorities.

WNBA Cleveland has held youth clinics, including an all-girls camp where the participants and coaches dressed up in WNBA orange. (Courtesy Cleveland WNBA)

“(Fans) want to make sure that we’re going to take care of the players,” Howard said. “And they want an inclusive experience. So our commitment, and what we’re building right now, is to be the most inclusive sports team in all of sports. That is really, really important to us. We want everybody to feel very welcome and very safe at Rocket Arena, especially during WNBA games.”

Part of that inclusivity is figuring out how to make the WNBA affordable for everyone despite the league’s skyrocketing interest and demand for tickets and merchandise. It’s a topic that is top of mind for Howard as Cleveland builds its business.

The team is still considering whether to bring back the Rockers name from the previous Cleveland franchise that played from 1997-2003. At the very least, there will be Rockers throwback nights and corresponding merchandise. Cleveland is also involving former players such as Janice Braxton and Rushia Brown in community events to maintain a connection to the past.

Howard attended All-Star weekend in Indianapolis and sat in meetings with league officials and other team presidents. The goal was to learn what other franchises are seeing in their communities, how the demographics of their season ticket members differ from their NBA counterparts, and what best practices they can share for an expansion franchise.

“I give tremendous credit to all of my co-workers around the league already for how open and transparent they’ve been,” Howard said. “Everybody is in this for the success of the WNBA and women’s basketball. It is a long trajectory that I believe in, and I can see it.”

Given Cleveland’s status as an expansion team and its connection to the Cavaliers NBA franchise, Howard cited the Golden State Valkyries as an example to follow for a debut. It helps that Golden State’s president, Jess Smith, is an NWSL veteran like Howard.

“We probably work in parallel of how the Valkyries have done business,” Howard said. “We certainly can learn from how competitive the Valkyries have been this year.”

Cleveland WNBA also announced the hires of Tamzin Barroilhet as senior vice president of corporate partnerships and commercial strategy and Kierstan Green as vice president of ticket sales and service. The team received more than 3,000 initial payments for season tickets within the first 30 hours of earning the expansion bid. That number has since risen to more than 6,000 initial payments.

Cleveland is among five expansion teams set to join the WNBA before the end of the decade. The Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire will debut in 2026, followed by Cleveland in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030, bringing the league to 18 teams.

(Top photo of Allison Howard courtesy of Cleveland WNBA)