Why they move
A Midwest psychology degree: trust, fear, status. It is still the class I use most, including on a control nobody will adopt.
The rareseat
Marketing that ships, product judgment that holds, and a security education to match. I sit between the story and the system, and I can build either one.
Stillness
Good judgment starts with staying calm in the room.
I am a product marketing leader and marketing engineer today, and a security leader in the making: my master’s in cybersecurity engineering finishes in Fall 2027. Psychology taught me the room, ten years of full-stack engineering taught me the keyboard, and hands-on AI is part of my daily work. Messaging only counts if a buyer can use it and the control behind it is real.
How it ships
A coding bootcamp, then a home lab, then battlecards, demo centers and presentation runtimes. The story is never a rumor about a feature.
What has to last
Years inside network, identity and secure-access security: rooms where every sentence has to survive a practitioner.
Where itwas done
Cybersecurity engineering
A master’s, pursued while working and finishing in Fall 2027, covering hands-on AI, secure software and network security.
Full-stack
Computer engineering in practice, from the first schema to the production deploy.
Psychology
Studied at a Midwest university: why people trust, click and fail.
Resilience
An injury took me out of the ring, and I found the way back.
The womanin the arena
I have spent nearly thirty years in the saddle, riding, training and rehabbing horses for hunter/jumper arenas across the United States. I grew up in the Midwest, started in eventing, and spent years in equestrian sport media, interviewing Olympians and covering shows across the country. Selected profiles and features are at catallen.media (opens in a new tab).
A life-altering injury once took me out of the saddle. The way back was not a comeback story. It was volunteering at a hippotherapy program and rehabbing by being useful to someone else’s horse. Today I ride as an amateur again, and off the horse I train Muay Thai and kickboxing, because discipline carries from one arena to the next.
My mission in the hunter/jumper ring is to restore the popularity of the American Thoroughbred by showing the power of second chances.
The credit belongs to the woman in the arena: dust on her boots, a refusal behind her, still mounted.
Second chances
A horse can come back, and so can the people who believe in her.
The big bay marethat could
Some horses arrive when the stars align. Dixie came into my life as a scrawny three-year-old with only thirty days under saddle, and she met every requirement I had: big, bay and brave, never spooky.
She is also related to Man o’ War, the racehorse in the painting my grandmother Ruth left for me, and she is the spitting image of him. Her most famous ancestor is Unbridled, who won the 1990 Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Big bay brave
Three requirements, and a young mare who met all of them.
Ruth’s gift
My grandmother left me a portrait of Man o’ War. Dixie looks like she walked out of it.
Unbridled
Winner of the 1990 Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and her most famous ancestor.
In 2024, on the Friday before our first horse show, Dixie went down with colic and needed emergency surgery. I had a split second to decide whether to fund it or to put her down. I chose to double down on my beautiful big bay mare. With the help of my family and my personal savings, I scraped together enough to save her life, then rehabbed her properly at one of the best facilities in the country.
Dixie turns eight in 2027, and we hope to see her make her hunter ring debut. She is the reason I believe in second chances, and the reason I want to see the American Thoroughbred celebrated in the arena again.
The big bay mare that could.