The Thriving Equine Professional | Career Connections, Equine Industry Resources, Career Advice. · JodiSpeaksLIFE: Speaker, Career Success Coach, Podcaster

69 | How to Find Your Own Unique Career Path in the Equine Industry with Danielle Aamodt

·52 min·3 clips

Danielle’s human-herd model names five roles: guardian, nurturer, voyager, enforcer, and prevailer.

1. The Thriving Equine Professional episode with Danielle Aamodt focuses on finding a unique career path in the equine industry. 2. Host Jodi Lynch-Findley, founder of Jodi Speaks Life, introduces Danielle Aamodt as an equine industry consultant, coach, equine and farm insurance agent, Mustang advocate, and director of operations with the Mustang Heritage Foundation. 3. The episode asks how someone can build a career by following interest, research, and connections instead of a fixed track. 4. Danielle says she grew up in a family of six children and got her first riding lesson at age six because her mother was looking for activities like piano, dance, and riding lessons. 5. She says she spent part of high school in theater and began college at the University of the Arts in downtown Philadelphia studying to be a theater director. 6. Danielle explains that she kept scheduling classes around barn work, found a part-time job at a barn, and realized horses were still the thing she kept choosing. 7. She chose Centenary College in New Jersey because she wanted a school that would “catapult” her into the equine industry and give her a foothold. 8. Danielle says Centenary was hunter-jumper focused, while she was trying to become a dressage rider, and she valued learning from real professionals there. 9. She recommends that people in their twenties “say yes to everything,” including volunteer work and short courses, because experience can show what fits and what does not. 10. Danielle gives the example of volunteering one day as a horse show photographer and realizing the travel-heavy lifestyle was not for her, then taking a week-long equine massage course and finding a better fit. 11. She says moving between states was easier for her as an adult because she grew up as an army brat who moved every four years as a child. 12. Danielle graduated in 2010 during the recession and still found work in Virginia with Shire horses, minis, and later a Wellington season as a hunter-jumper groom. 13. She says those jobs gave her a broader base than many horse professionals because she saw different disciplines, barns, and ways the industry runs. 14. Danielle describes deciding on an MBA by researching equine industry jobs, looking up the education of people already in those roles, and seeing many with business backgrounds. 15. Jodi and Danielle both emphasize that business skills, marketing knowledge, and the ability to “speak horse” matter for modern equine careers. 16. Danielle says people should not let someone else “rubber stamp” their path because career direction can change four or five times over a career. 17. She says she taught adult learners at Post University’s equine program and encouraged students to keep learning no matter whether they are starting in their fifties or earlier. 18. The conversation stays practical and conversational, with Jodi repeatedly pushing for concrete career advice and Danielle answering with examples from LinkedIn, job searches, and her own moves. 19. People looking for equine career advice, MBA decisions, or nontraditional horse-industry roles would likely get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a tightly scripted technical lesson or a purely horse-training episode may skip it.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Thriving Equine Professional | Career Connections, Equine Industry Resources, Career Advice.