Adult amateurs, it’s your time to shine! We are featuring all things adult amateur throughout the month of April.
Dressage riders who are designated as an adult amateur with USEF are eligible for amateur-exclusive year-end award divisions, including Master’s Challenge, Vintage Cup, Adequan®/USDF Adult Amateur Awards, All-Breeds Awards, and more!
A Region 7 adult amateur shares about balancing her tech security career with staying involved in the dressage industry through weekly riding lessons, and taking advantage of volunteering and educational opportunities!
By Caitlin Allen
“Can you hold my phone while I ride? If PagerDuty calls, press 2. I’ll hop off and grab my laptop.” I’ve said this too many times when entering the arena for a lesson or clinic.
I work as a security engineer, helping protect companies from cyber threats by responding to incidents, fixing vulnerabilities, and making sure security issues don’t become a headline. Sometimes I’m fixing a broken configuration, rewriting alert rules, or spearheading security improvement initiatives. These things are always in the back of my mind. While the outside world stops for most people when they are at the barn, I’m somehow living in two.
I grew up in central New Jersey and started riding western at the age of 11. I have always loved horses, and I finally convinced my parents to sign me up for lessons. At thirteen, I switched to dressage after, quite literally, handing my mom the phone to schedule my first lesson with Adrie Hoogsteen of Nearfield Farm.
I quickly became a working student for Adrie, and under her tutelage, I became involved with the Eastern States Dressage and Combined Training Association (ESDCTA), received a Dressage4Kids scholarship, and was named the 2017 Region 1 Youth Volunteer of the Year. All of this happened while I was balancing school, barn work, preparing for a show, and working a part-time job in food service. I’ve always thrived off having something to do, and a goal to work toward.
In August of 2017, I moved to Burlington, Vermont, to attend Champlain College as a Computer Networking and Cybersecurity major. I was only able to ride on breaks when I visited home, due to the rigorous coursework, internships, working at the local Target, running a club, and maintaining some semblance of a social life.
After graduating in May of 2021, I rode with Jamie Fell of Fell-Valle Dressage, and began my first full-time role as a Threat Analyst at a Vermont-based security company where I had interned during my senior year. While I missed riding dearly when I went to college, always bringing my riding boots just in case, I wouldn’t change the experience of finding my identity outside of horses. I came back focused and ready to improve without the worries of school or working as many hours as possible.
I had always wanted to move to the Bay Area, so when the opportunity came to become a Security Incident Response Analyst at a large fintech company in November 2021, I took it. I worked remotely from Vermont on West Coast hours before eventually packing up and driving across the country to California. It was the road trip of a lifetime, with a stop at the Indy 500 and many national park visits during the two-week trip.
My career really took off once I arrived in California. I had begun to grow into my role, and our team was maturing. I was an early hire to this newer team, so I gained first-hand experience helping grow a team from four employees on the West Coast into a multi-national 24/7 Security Operations and Incident Response team.
On the riding side, I eventually found my place in Samantha Billings-Coatney’s lesson program at Billings Equestrian. Being still early in my career and building a secure financial future for myself, I ride in lessons once a week, maybe more by the end of 2026. Even with only riding once a week, my riding has significantly improved, and I make the most of what every lesson horse has to teach me.
I haven’t shown since 2017, before I went to college, and it may be a few more years before I return. Right now, I’m working as hard as I can to build stability that will allow me to pursue my long-term goal of earning all my USDF Rider Medals and Freestyle Bars. In the meantime, I’ve remained involved in the dressage community through volunteering, and even earned my USDF University Bronze Diploma.
USDF offers many ways to stay engaged without showing, like their quarterly book club with discussions by the authors. USDF University offers short courses that earn educational credits, like the book club. Educational credits can also come from in-person experiences, like when I rode as a demo rider for the L Education Training in 2018. Credits from these events go towards earning a diploma.
In 2025, I joined the Metropolitan Horsemen’s Association (MHA) in Oakland as a Director at Large. Oakland has an extensive equestrian history, and MHA’s mission is to promote good horsemanship, improve accessibility to riding, and preserve the equestrian spaces left in Oakland, like Sequoia Arena. Many local riding organizations and clubs have dwindled in membership, but they are an incredibly valuable part of the equestrian community. That is what motivated me to join. Our president, Rachel Royce, has been an incredible mentor and introduced me to her horse, Harry Potter.
Spending time in the saddle is only one part of becoming a great horseman. Riding is about much more than remembering to use your outside rein—it’s about building true partnership grounded in confidence, connection, and trust.
That partnership begins long before you mount. It’s shaped by how you care for your horse, how you lead them, and how you communicate through simple, intentional exercises like backing up or asking them to yield their hindquarters. I’ve learned to slow down and become more observant during everyday moments, especially while grooming—paying attention to tightness or asymmetry in their body so I can better support them. Along the way, I’ve also picked up basic massage and stretching techniques to help loosen their muscles and prepare them for work.
Harry and I even participated in a sensory clinic, similar to mounted police training. We started with groundwork and navigated various obstacles, such as walking through a ball pit and crossing a rocking bridge under saddle before being exposed to simulated gunfire, flares, and sirens. Experiences like these aren’t just fun—they build confidence and deepen trust, both of which are essential whether you’re riding at home, or at a high energy, busy show.
Recently, I started in a new role as an Incident Response and Security Operations Engineer at a digital forensics software company after taking a brief career break. I’ve been trying to hit the ground running, and have already jumped into projects. At my previous company, somebody in passing once said, “Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we can’t do it,” and “You’ll do it, because you have to.” That mindset has stuck with me.
I look up to riders like Charlotte Jorst, whose path back to the sport and subsequent rise to the top is incredibly inspiring. After stepping away due to financial issues following her father’s passing, she worked relentlessly to get back in the saddle, building Kastel Denmark. I’m turning 27 in June, and like her, I’m in a phase of life where I’m building the future I want in this sport. Along the way, I also started a small equestrian business, creating hand-beaded browbands, belts, and pins called Silver Lining Browbands and Bling. You might not see them in Dover Saddlery anytime soon, but you’ll see me back in the show ring. Because I have to.
