Board of Directors

Shannon Johnson Personeni - VICE PRESIDENT

Shannon is the founding member of T.R.O.T.R. and has been here from its inception. She is always smiling and encouraging and is the backbone to our organization. Shannon is a Woodland native and has been involved with horses since the age of five.
She rode on the UCD Eventing team during her senior year in high school and then on the University of Oregon Hunter/Jumper team throughout college. She continues to ride English and pursue personal goals in 3-day eventing. Shannon can be seen around the ranch teaching lessons, driving the tractor and is always available if the need arises.
Professionally, Shannon has her MBA and is the full-time director of the WISE Foundation, a non-profit, international educational program.

Kathleen Walton - VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR

Kathleen began English riding lessons in the hunt country of Virginia at age 6 and as a teenager she competed in neighborhood horse shows in equitation classes on the flat and jumping 3 ft. fences in the Green Working Hunter division. At age 8, she received her first pony, 28-year-old Cupcake, veteran of many summer camp programs, and from him, she learned pretty much all the ways a horse can remove its rider and, most importantly, how to fall off safely. After Cupcake, she learned patience while training negative behaviors out of other people’s horses.
She continued riding classes in college, but once she was on her own economically, riding lessons didn’t fit the budget. She and her husband moved to Woodland in 1994 for his job at UCD and she was a stay-at-home mom to her 3 children for 15 years, volunteering for the Woodland Toy Library, Formerly Employed Mothers at the Leading Edge, American Association of University Women, the Jane Austen Society, and as a helper in her children’s elementary classrooms, in Cub Scout summer twilight camps, and did her shifts in the snack bar at Cal Ripken baseball games.
In 2006, she was co-organizer of the all-donations food tent during the Ferns Park rebuild in Woodland. She has worked as a lunch lady at Pioneer High School since 2010 and has supervised Saturday morning stall cleaners at T.R.O.T.R. since 2011, joining the board of directors as Volunteer Coordinator in 2013.

Debbie Shoup - VOLUNTEER CO-COORDINATOR

Debbie has a lifetime love of horses, starting with jumping lessons in elementary school, summer ranch camp, and one glorious summer with a pony at her grandparents’ house. Once she and her husband Bob had their son Joseph, she didn’t have as much free time, but still managed to get in a couple of visits a year to her parents’ house in western PA where they have a couple of horses and the whole family would go on long dreamy trail rides throughout the neighboring countryside.
Debbie is a lifelong volunteer, having tutored at-risk youth in Chicago, served on the Davis Junior Blue Devils and then Davis High School football boards during most of Joseph’s long youth sports career, facilitated youth job internships, sewn several hundred COVID-19 masks, and dressed up in her grandmother's Easter Bunny costume to entertain kids each year (which she still does!). Debbie also really enjoys working since 1997 at CaseTrakker, helping to create medical care management software.
Once Joseph went off to college, Debbie started getting more and more involved with her horse heart place: T.R.O.T.R! There she relishes working with the animals and the people and says they both “fill her bucket to the brim.” She is pictured here with a couple of her good buddies: Joe and Horace.

Cari McDill - BOARD MEMBER

Cari’s love of horses began with riding lessons as a teen. She grew up and started a family in southern Illinois where she eventually turned to horses as a therapeutic activity for her oldest son Joey, employing both hippotherapy and adaptive riding. Soon after moving to Woodland in 2019, she was thrilled to find T.R.O.T.R., and soon enrolled him in adaptive riding lessons. With Joey having such a positive riding experience, Cari enrolled her younger son as well. Cari began volunteering at the ranch in the spring of 2021 and soon roped in her husband, Brad, as well. She has great enthusiasm for pitching in around the ranch, and she is always eager to learn more.
Cari is excited about the opportunity to help T.R.O.T.R. reach its goals and to grow more involved with this lovely community. Whether helping with the animals on the ranch or utilizing her graphic design skills, Cari is grateful to be part of what makes T.R.O.T.R. a transformative experience for the participants and other volunteers.

Shweta Satarkar - BOARD MEMBER
Shweta is a stay-at-home mom of two teenagers and is self-employed.
She loves music, reading and enjoys cooking a lot.
She was always fascinated by horses but had never ridden one and thought maybe in her next life she will be born on a ranch.
Around 2017, she got an opportunity to ride on Auburn’s beautiful trails and she instantly fell in love with the horses. Her dream is to participate in endurance riding.
During the pandemic everything changed; she got some flexible time to use for herself, so she started to look for a place with horses which offered volunteer jobs and she came across T.R.O.T.R.
The love and care provided by everyone here always inspired her. T.R.O.T.R. gives her the greatest opportunity to be close to our community.
She is looking forward to learning more and working along with our T.R.O.T.R. family, of which we all are so proud.

Jane Austen - BOARD MEMBER

I have loved horses since my childhood when I read all the horse books in the library, and my brother and I tried to convince our parents that we could care for a horse perfectly well in our suburban Chicago garage. Apart from a few months of group riding lessons around age 10, I had no direct experience with them until my daughter gifted me with riding lessons at T.R.O.T.R. some 65 years later!
Raising two beautiful children consecutively in two marriages and then helping with grandchildren until they were grown fully occupied my heart for many years. Arriving at college late and continuing my education with 2 master's degrees kept my mind busy as well. Now both heart and mind are available to refresh childhood dreams with real opportunities to learn and to serve T.R.O.T.R. horses and people!

Rebecca Watson - BOARD MEMBER

Rebecca grew up in rural Michigan, rearing and caring for a variety of animals. Her horse experience then was casual trail riding with friends as a teen.
Her first job was working with adults and children in a brain injury rehabilitation center and found her love for animals was a wonderful way to connect to people and she would bring small animals into work with her to help brighten their day.
After moving to California, she became a Veterinary Assistant for a small animal hospital and later, a Senior Animal Technician for U.C. Davis.
While researching activities for their kids, Rebecca and her husband found T.R.O.T.R.'s riding program to be a perfect fit for their daughter and loved seeing her bloom in the welcoming environment while bonding with the people, horses and animals at the ranch.
In summer 2021, she and her daughter began volunteering for T.R.O.T.R. together. They've loved caring for the horses and assisting with events and therapy lessons.
Rebecca enjoys using art and creative projects to help at T.R.O.T.R. and has recently started taking riding lessons there as well.
Her interests are: arts/crafts, baking, biology, rearing neonatal small animals, diversity and inclusion advocacy, and spending time with family and friends.
Rebecca is a Campus Safety Supervisor at her daughter's elementary school where she enjoys bonding with the students over strange animal facts.

Erik Cardenas - BOARD MEMBER

Erik was raised in Southern California and joined the U.S. Air Force in 2006 when he was 18 years old. He has been stationed all over the U.S., served in two foreign wars, and humanitarian missions across the globe looking for our Nation’s missing in action from past conflicts. Currently, he is station in Sacramento, Calif. as a digital marketing manager.
His love for the outdoors and helping people prompted him to serve his community. He has been a volunteer at T.R.O.T.R. for six months primarily as a lead/side walker assisting with youth riding lessons.