NMCTR Board of Directors

Our Board is made up of community members who donate their time on a volunteer basis. They provide oversight and governance and recognize their responsibility with donations of both time and money. We are proud to enjoy 100% participation from the Board for financial contributions on an annual basis.

Ashley Fischer

Interim-President

Ashley attended the University of New Mexico, pursuing a career in Speech Language Pathology. She has worked in the special needs community for over 15 years and was a home supervisor for ARCA in Albuquerque. She was a former member of the United States Pony Club and has ridden horses for over 25 years. She is the current PATH Intl NM State Rep, serves as the Watermelon Mountain Pony Club (WMPC) Treasurer, and is on the WMPC Horse Trials Committee. When she is not working, she spends her time competing with her show horses in 3-day eventing and enjoying time with her family. Her desire to help others and her love for horses led her to seek a career in therapeutic riding. She joined the NMCTR team in 2013.

Celia Ludi

Secretary

Celia is a life-long Santa Fean with roots in the area going back 400+ years. She is a retired lawyer who worked primarily in government - all three state branches as well as local government. She’s also a trained and experienced teacher and mediator. Her love of horses started as a child when she had friends with horses in their backyards. Since then she’s recognized the many gifts working with horses can bring to humans, and is a firm believer in the saying that “the best thing for the inside of a person is the outside of a horse”. Celia has been a volunteer with NMCTR since 2017 and looks forward to many more years of helping to provide therapeutic horse experiences to other people.

Michael Rawn

Board Member

Michael has spent the past 43 years in higher education, doing research and teaching mathematics at universities in the Congo, India, New Orleans, New York, Indiana, and for 30 years at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. He was a co-founder of NMCTR in 2010. He was also the co-founder of a nonprofit recycling company in northern Indiana in 1989, Manchester Recycling. He is currently retired and spends most of his time learning Spanish, golfing, traveling, hiking in the mountains, visiting with former students, and most of all volunteering at NMCTR. His spouse of 37 years, Cynthia, is also a volunteer at NMCTR. He has two children, Benjamin and Anna, who live in Berlin, Germany, and San Francisco, CA, respectively.

Sherry Witt Snow

Treasurer

Sherry is a semi-retired CFO who relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to Santa Fe in 2017. Sherry has an MBA and is a member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. She is a past Event Chair Cupertino Relay for Life, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society and attends St. Bede’s Episcopal Church where she sings in the choir. Fascinated by horses since high school, she and her husband Ned volunteer on the horse care team. Volunteering at NMCTR combines her love of animals with her mission to make a difference in someone’s life every day. She is excited to help NMCTR take its next steps to becoming a world class therapeutic riding facility.

Liza Solomon

Board Member

Liza grew up in New York and lived in Maryland prior to relocating to Santa Fe with her wife and cat and dog in 2020. She has a doctorate in Public Health and conducted her doctoral research on the long term effects of head trauma. After completing her graduate studies she spent her professional career working in programs to combat HIV, including serving as Director of the AIDS Administration in Maryland for 10 years. She volunteered at a Maryland therapeutic riding program for 5 years and once here in Santa Fe joined the NMCTR program serving as a volunteer with the programs and now as a member of the board.

MaryEllen Staib

Board Member

MaryEllen grew up on Long Island NY, and lived in Pittsburgh and southern California working in horticulture, before moving to Santa Fe in June 2020. She loves to cook from scratch everyday, bake when the weather is nice, garden, hike, and spend time listening to music. MaryEllen became a stay at home mom after her second child, who is autistic, was born. He needed many years and hours of early intervention therapy, and as a stay at home mom she able to provide that for him. They've been clients of NMCTR since 2021. MaryEllen says, "NMCTR, and the connection my son has with his horse, is one of the most incredible experiences of our lives. Santa Fe has quickly become the best place I’ve ever lived. "

Michele McInnes

Board Member

Michele relocated from New York City to Santa Fe in 2023 along with her husband Dave and their two dogs. Trained as an urban planner, Michele spent her career in Geographic Information Systems and eventually retired as the Chief Information Officer of the NYC Department of City Planning. After spending her career behind a computer, Michele dreamed of working outside with animals and is thrilled to be an active volunteer at NMCTR working alongside the horses and the clientele that they serve. After raising a child and two stepchildren in NYC (two with special needs), Michele wishes that her children had been able to benefit from an organization such as NMCTR and wants to ensure that this organization continues to thrive to benefit others.

Advisory Board

Dr. Stuart Garber, Dr. Garber’s Natural Solutions and Maxwell Pet by Dr. Garber
Steve Rymer