This Bucks County native is the Philadelphia Eagles director of football operations

Posted by author January 28, 2025 Football

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Ameena Soliman first joined the Philadelphia Eagles as an intern in 2018. Six and a half years later, she’s heading to her first Super Bowl with the team as the director of football operations.

An Eagles spokesperson declined to make Soliman available for an interview, but the Bucks County native is an integral part of the team off the field. If an Instagram photo of a much-younger Soliman clad in an Eagles jersey at what appears to be Lincoln Financial Field is any indication, her hunt started long ago.

Soliman worked her way up with four internships in sports personnel roles before landing one at Temple University, where she also studied finance and marketing.

Her time in Owls recruiting spanned some of the football team’s strongest seasons, according to the university’s 30 Under 30 profile of Soliman, and a key blowout against Penn State (Saquon Barkley, whom the Eagles would later sign during Soliman’s tenure, picked up just a single rushing yard in that game).

But first Soliman, from Lower Makefield, put in her time locally, working at a law office in Yardley and as a camp counselor for the Falls Township parks department while attending high school at Noor-Ul-Iman School in nearby Monmouth Junction, N.J. Her dad, Ahmed Soliman, is a Temple Health surgeon with an office in Abington Township.

After a stint at NFL headquarters — with a five-hour daily bus commute between New York and Philadelphia — the former martial arts instructor landed at Eagles training camp as an intern for the franchise.

The team eventually promoted Soliman to pro scout — responsible for evaluating free agents and identifying weaknesses in upcoming opponents — and has recruited two pro players during Soliman’s tenure that have proven essential to the Eagles’ success this season: Saquon Barkley and Zack Baun.

But Soliman’s sights could be set even higher — in 2023, she attended the league’s front office and general manager accelerator program alongside four women known to be short listed for top jobs in football operations.

Two of them — Dawn Aponte and Catherine Hickman, a former Eagles vice president — lost out on general manager roles with the Jets and the Titans in the past week.

No matter who becomes the NFL’s next woman general manager, they will follow in the Eagles’ footsteps: Susan Tose Spencer became the first woman in the league to take on the executive role for the Philadelphia team in the 1980s.

Jess Rohan can be reached at jrohan@gannett.com.