Board of Directors
Executive Director:
Ginger Kathrens - Producer/ Cinematographer
GINGER KATHRENS is an Emmy Award-winning producer, cinematographer, writer and editor as well as an award-winning author. Her documentary filmmaking trips have taken her to Africa, Asia, Europe, Central and South America and all over the U.S. She filmed and produced the acclaimed Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies and Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns for WNET’s Nature series on PBS. Cloud will return to PBS in November with Cloud: Challenge of The Stallions. Five years in the making, it is Kathrens’ next chapter in the life of the charismatic wild stallion she has documented since his birth in May of 1995. Ginger’s revealing journey with wild horses has been compared to Jane Goodall’s experiences with Chimpanzees. Her documentation of Cloud represents the only continuing chronicle of a wild animal from birth in our hemisphere.
Kathrens was the co-producer and cinematographer of the two-hour Discovery Channel special, Spirits of the Rainforest, which won two Emmy Awards including one for Best Documentary. Additional projects for Discovery included The Ultimate Guide: Horses and The Ultimate Guide: Dogs. Kathrens also wrote, edited, and produced over two dozen segments of the Wild America series for PBS, and has filmed for National Geographic, Animal Planet and the BBC.
In 2008, Kathrens completed the cinema verité one-hour program, They Crossed the Mountains, The History of the Western States Trail for the Western States Trail Foundation in Auburn, California. For twenty years, she was a political media consultant and producer, working with Presidents Reagan, Ford, and George H. Walker Bush. Her highly regarded political productions include the award-winning short subject, Steady Under Fire, the story of former Colorado U.S. Senator Hank Brown.
Ginger is the founder and Executive Director of The Cloud Foundation, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to the preservation of wild horses on our public lands with special attention on isolated, historically significant and genetically unique herds like Cloud’s. She is an informed, impassioned and entertaining speaker on behalf of wild horses from coast to coast. She is an expert on Spanish wild horses and has served as a consultant for the television documentary, Horses of the Conquistadors.
Secretary/Treasurer:
Ann is the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) of Exempla Lutheran Medical Center in Denver. She is the owner of Smokey and Mahogany, Cloud's sisters who were captured in the 1997 roundup. Both are limited distance endurance horses and wonderful trail companions. Mahogany was ranked #1 in the mountain region in the Best Conditioned category in 2005. She was privileged to work on all three of the Cloud films and Year of the Mustang so has been a frequent visitor to the Pryor Mountains since 1995.
Board Member:
Craig Downer
Craig C. Downer is a wildlife ecologist (UCalifBerk, UNevReno, UKanLawr, UDurhamUK) who has extensively studied both the wild horses of the West and the endangered mountain tapirs of the northern Andes.
He has given speeches and written many
articles, including encyclopedic, and several books. His works are both popular and scientific, in English, Spanish and translated to German. Several of these concern wild horses, their ecological contribution, their North American evolutionary roots, their great natural and social value and their survival plight. He is a member of the World Conservation Union, Species Survival Commission and has written the Action Plan for the mountain tapir (1997). Fluent in Spanish and competent in French, he is also a member of the American Society of Mammalogists. One of his books, entitled Wild Horses: Living Symbols of Freedom (1977), examines these magnificent animals from a variety of perspectives, stressing their need to live both freely and naturally in appropriate habitats of sufficient size for long-term viability. He frequently emphasizes how much we owe the horse and by this he means the sharing of freedom on the land here in this world we share as home. Craig has also written a book of poetry Streams of the Soul (2005) containing several illustrated poems concerning wild horses, plays the piano and composes music. His speech Forever Wild and Free (Wild Horse Forum-2008) received a standing ovation and has been posted on several websites. He has also been a plaintiff in several legal suits to restore wild horses and burros at viable population levels in their legal herd areas throughout the West and has given testimony. He is a 4th generation Nevadan and grew up with his best friend Poco, a tall chestnut stallion, with whom he had many adventures in the deserts and mountains of western Nevada and eastern California.
Board Member:
Susan Sutherland
Susan Sutherland is a professional in the financial services industry interfacing with the banking, trading, and manufacturing sectors in the U.S. and around the world. Susan has an agricultural and farming background in Illinois. Her interest in horses has been channeled to the advocacy of wild horses in the U.S. She is the guardian of three Mustangs: Bravo, nephew of Cloud (adopted from Front Range Equine Resce); Arrow, Cloud's granddaughter who was rounded up in 2009 and gave birth to a roan colt, Arroyo, in April 2010. (Pictured: Susan and Arrow at a Colorado Parade, Summer 2010).
Board Member:
Anni Williams
Top corporations, law firms, government agencies and non-profit organizations have enlisted Anni over the past 25 years to provide highly specialized communication consulting services. She helped start-up a successful 501(c)(3) that later served as a model for other state agency and private sector alcohol abuse prevention programs and successfully handled risk management issues as an Executive Director to an international trade association. Anni also directed numerous grassroots and advocacy programs for regional and statewide political campaigns and ran her own Top 25 ranked San Francisco Bay Area public relations firm. Also regarded as an expert in witness preparation and trial communication strategy, Anni presently consults with prominent law firms across the country to tackle challenging legal cases.
During her tenure as Vice-President of Gilmour-Williams Communications, she helped write and produce award-winning educational videos such as Changing Fortunes for the Michigan Lottery, Second Wind for the Mills/Peninsula Hospital Foundation, and the Make a Difference national TV campaign for the American Association of Retired Persons.
In the early nineties, Anni decided to apply her advocacy skills and creative writing talents to protecting the rights of wild animals, teaming-up with Ginger Kathrens on a wide range of natural history projects, including Spirits of the Rain Forest, an Emmy award-winning Discovery Channel documentary.
Now, helping to protect Cloud and America’s wild horse herds has become her greatest passion. She has followed Cloud’s life for the past 14 years, assisting Ginger and the Cloud Foundation in preserving the legacy and well-being of America’s wild horses through media exposure, legislative advocacy, and grassroots educational programs. Let them remain wild and roam free!
Board Member
Julianne French
Julianne French lives in Tucson, Arizona where she shares her life with 3 horses. She believes wild horse families share an integral connection with nature and the human spirit and link us with our historic past. She iscommitted to educating the public and lawmakers about the contributions and benefits of wild horses and burros to our environment and culture. She has written op-eds and many letters to the editor on the need to save our wild horses. She has sponsored Wild Horse Booths at the Earth Day Event in Tucson and many local Horse Rescue Fundraisers collecting thousands of signatures on letters to congressional representatives.
Board Member:
Rob Pliskin began gentling wild horses in 1998 at national workshops presented by the US DOI – BLM Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Program. In December 2006, while a trainer at Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue in Lancaster, CA; he developed clinics in Equestrian Education and brought the EAGALA model to Lifesavers. 
Lisa Anne Friday, PHR
Honorary Board Member:
