A horse lover still kicking: Ann Collette

Ann Collette has a photo of her childhood horse, Rosie, on her desk at Masonicare in Wallingford, CT. The chief of strategy still tears up when she talks about her “heart horse,” who died suddenly when Collette was just 18.

Her parents had scrimped and saved to buy Rosie, so the memory also brings to mind their love and support. After she lost Rosie, Collette didn’t ride again for a long time.

Instead, she threw herself into her career as a respiratory therapist and jumped at the chance to help design a respiratory program for a nearby nursing home. She hired three shifts of staff, leased ventilators and built policies and procedures to open the program.

But after six months of preparation, the program was cut because planners hadn’t done enough market research or budgeted enough to make it viable.

On what was to be her last day, Collette was offered a job as a clinical liaison at the nursing home. That eventually led her to unexpected opportunities — including a talent and passion for marketing.

She earned her MBA and focused on the business of running a nursing home.She didn’t want what happened to the fledgling respiratory program to happen to others.

Over the years, Colette developed a reputation for marketing expertise and corporate communications skills. She even started her own consulting business to help peers on the side.

Then one day in 2020, her son Jeremy gave her a gift certificate for a horseback riding lesson. He didn’t know much about his mom’s childhood riding — the two of them shared a passion for karate — but he had noticed her staring wistfully at horse farms whenever they drove through the country. That was all it took for Collette to re-enter the horse training world.

Before long, she had fallen in love with Mouse, an off-track thoroughbred race horse, whom she now leases. The fact that Mouse is an ex-race horse feels right to Collette. They’re both re-starts, learning to ride again, together. After all, they say, horses mirror their humans.

“Everything I’ve done in my life, from getting my first job as a clinical liaison after being laid off to getting this horse, is a direct result of the energy I put out,” says Collette. “I choose to remain mindful and present, visualizing only the best outcomes while understanding those results may or may not be what I hoped for, remaining open to learning from everyone I have come in contact with and grateful for every opportunity.”

A fourth-degree black belt and three-time North American Sport Karate Association champion, Collette also owns a karate school with her husband, Don Krantz, and her son. When they aren’t teaching at their school of 200 students or training with their own coaches, they travel the world competing.

And when the mounts or karate mats aren’t underfoot, Colette and Krantz devote some of their passion to taking in live music, including the band Phish.

It’s fitting that jam bands would hold the fascination of someone so adept at jamming so much into her own rich life.