Jessie Yankee

Jessie Yankee has spent her entire career inside the engine room of small business, first as a founder and operator, then as a program builder and advisor. She has coached hundreds of small business owners through launch, growth, crisis, and transition. She knows what it takes to scale a business because she has done it herself, more than once.

Jessie's introduction to entrepreneurship came early. While earning her BSBA at the University of Missouri and MBA at William Woods University, she worked full-time at the state office of the Missouri Small Business and Technology Development Center and spent five years seeing the small business ecosystem from the inside. There she spotted a gap in the Columbia market: affordable IT services for small businesses. She founded EasyPC Small Business IT to fill it. Over seven years she built it into an award-winning commercial IT company, handling sales, hiring, operations, and community relationships, and the company was acquired in 2017.

She then turned her operator's lens to building programs from the ground up. As the second leader of the Missouri Women's Business Center, she greatly expanded the MoWBC's reach and impacts throughout Mid-Missouri. She also co-created ASPIRE MO with the Missouri Women's Council and the Missouri Department of Corrections, a 20-week entrepreneurship program helping incarcerated women build business plans before reentry.

Jessie went on to the role of Senior VP of the national Association of Women's Business Centers. In that role she led program development, advocacy, and capacity building for more than 150 Women's Business Centers nationwide. She launched national platforms including HOPE2Women.org and VeteranStartUp.org, built public-private partnerships, secured sustainable funding, and worked across the SBA, SBDC, and VBOC ecosystem. Advocacy for small business, particularly women-owned small businesses, remains one of Jessie's most passionate pursuits. In the meantime, she built both a rental real estate portfolio and a food service franchise.

Jessie left AWBC to found Vernare Strategy Group to be the operational partner she wished she'd had throughout her business ventures. Vernare is a collaborative of experienced advisors offering fractional COO services, business acceleration, strategy, interim leadership, and acquisition strategy, matched to each client's stage and challenges.

In her personal life, Jessie volunteers in her community, serves on multiple boards, and spends her time with her two teenage children. In 2026 she and her children launched a business together, Hokulia Shave Ice – Columbia.