The VQHA has a proud history of strong leadership. This weekend at the VQHA banquet we will be electing a new President and Vice President to carry on that tradition.
Beth Smith- Candidate for VQHA President
I’m Beth Smith and I’m running for VQHA President. I’ve been a member of VQHA since 2011 and for the past two years I have been the amateur Vice President. This last year I took on the VQHA Audit committee and through that work had a great opportunity to learn about the behind-the-scenes workings of the organization. We have had a dedicated group of members working incredibly hard on rebuilding the organization; my goal would be for us to build on that work by focusing the next year on stabilizing and streamlining the business of our organization so that we can spend more time promoting and enjoying our wonderful horses.
My career has been on the business side of health care; I’ve been a CFO, run an analytics shop, been chief of staff, a compliance officer and done strategy and planning work for different sizes and types of organizations. For the past 10 years I’ve been consulting with major health care systems on improving how we deliver care. Depends on the day if I think we’ve made any progress, but I have learned a great deal about improving and streamlining operations which I can bring to VQHA to complement the wealth of horse knowledge we have in the organization.
My husband and I live on a 100 year family farm in Farmville with a large herd of beef cattle, an
assortment of cats and a large goofy dog. We have two daughters that are successfully adulting (woot!
woot!). Many of you may know my older daughter, Mary Kate, as she was VQHYA president and a
national AQHYA director in her youth days and is now a vet interning at Woodside Clinic. My show
partner is Lefty; we show novice and select all around events and he does his best to keep us out of
trouble.
The folks stepping down are leaving big shoes to fill, but I am excited about the future of our
organization and would appreciate the opportunity to contribute what I can to that future.
Jessica Hendrickson- Candidate for VQHA Vice President
Hi all!
I am Jessica Hendrickson (Spencer on facebook) and I have been a part of VQHA for quite a few years now. Since joining VQHA, I have taken on various duties to support VQHA, VAQHA, and VQHYA over the years, such as handling show awards and year end awards, stall reservations for the Doswell shows, and most recently, serving on the audit committee. I have also served on the Amateur nominating committee for three years and have supported the Youth in various fundraisers. Outside of VQHA, I have two children and a wonderful fiancé, Todd Hulings. My son previously served as the VQHYA President and recently my daughter has started attending more quarter horse shows and I’m hopeful she will start showing. I look forward to the opportunity to step into a leadership role and continuing to help grow VQHA.
