Cochranville, PA – Ten years ago, when Stephanie Simpson was just two years into her career as a professional groom for Dominic and Jimmie Schramm, she told the Chronicle she still felt a bit out of place in the big leagues, as a kid from a dairy farm in Vermont grooming at a competition like the Kentucky Three-Day Event.

Today, Simpson is the barn manager and head groom for Olympic event rider Boyd Martin, overseeing his top-tier international program with nearly a dozen working students and staff and horses at all levels of training. Throughout the years, Simpson’s hard work and humor—along with her keen attention to detail and genuine love for the horses in her care—set her apart as a fixture in the sport.

But it was an unconventional path led Simpson from the family’s Vermont farm to a stable with horses and riders so famous they’re household names. 

“I didn’t go right from college to here,” she said. “There was a huge learning curve coming from a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere to sport horses.”

With that learning curve came long days and lots of hard work. Simpson credits her family’s lifestyle for her work ethic and grit. “You have to farm because you love it,” she said. “It makes you tough.”

It was her advisor at the University of Vermont, where Simpson earned a degree in animal sciences, who first encouraged her to follow the pull of horses and seek out a working student position to get her feet wet. That led her to Pennsylvania, where she took her first job with eventer Jane Sleeper then moved to the Schramms, ultimately staying with them for four years as a groom and de facto barn manager.

In 2018 she received the phone call that would change her life. She was just finishing up a winter’s worth of work for Liz Halliday, driving Halliday’s rig back to Ocala from Kentucky, when that pivotal call … went to voice mail. 

Boyd Martin knew that Simpson was between jobs, he said, and he needed a groom. Seven years later, Simpson still has the message saved on her phone. 

“I’d always admired how hard she worked,” Martin said. “When she worked for Dom and Jimmie, she’d wake up at three o’clock in the morning to muck stalls for other riders, then babysit after her day was over. I saw that she was invested in her goals, and I was drawn to that.”  

She took the position, and now she’s a regular at five-star events all over the world, having accompanied Martin to two Olympics and two world championships along the way. 

Find the whole story about Steph right here!