Raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California, Kathryn graduated with an honours degree in Psychology from Stanford University in 1979.  She did not, however, charge forward into the brave new world of corporate America, as her parents intended.  Determined to shed her sheltered skin, to find and follow her own path, she instead moved to the Sierra Nevada mountains of California and became a ski bum and a waitress.  “I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I “grew up’,” she recalls, ” but I did know I wanted nothing to do with the rat race of the city, florescent lights, stuffy offices and rigid minds.  I rented a cabin in the woods and indulged my passions - skiing, sailing, playing tennis, riding horses, hiking mountains, playing the piano and doing T’ai Chi – all with a vengeance.  And I loved every minute of it!”

Kathryn’s affinity for resorts led her to a long and lucrative career in the hospitality industry, where she progressively donned the hats of restaurant manager, realtor, travel writer, marketing director, and, finally, hotel general manager in resorts throughout the world - the Sierras, the Rockies, the Cascades, The Tetons, the Alps and the Adirondacks.  Drawn to perfectionism, Kathryn found herself best suited to the crème de la crème of hotel associations, Relais & Chateaux.  From 1988 to 2003, Kathryn opened and managed two of the United States’ premier small exclusive hotels to 4 and 5 star status – Chateau du Sureau, near Yosemite National Park, and the Lake Placid Lodge, in Lake Placid, New York.  It was as managing director/partner at the Lake Placid Lodge that she achieved her hotelier distinction – taking a dilapidated lakefront property from a 38-room, $69/night shared-bath motel to an exclusive 30-room, $800/night, $6.5 million annual grossing resort touted in the Zagat Survey as one of the “Top 10 small resorts in the U.S.” 

Kathryn’s hotel career has been highlighted in both books and publications. She was profiled in Cooking Light Magazine (“Second Nature” - June 2002), selected as the nation’s featured female hotelier in Ceel Pasternak’s book “Cool Careers for Girls: Travel and Hospitality,” and chosen as one of 18 Adirondack women focused on in Kathleen Bagley’s book “Ladies Of The Lake: Women Rooted in Water” (Kathryn Kincannon: Managing The Millionaires).

While rewarding professionally, after fifteen years of ensuring affluent travellers achieved the pinnacle of destination resort happiness, Kathryn was ready for a change.  It came in the shape of one 2-legged man and his passion for 4-legged equines.  On vacation at a Relais & Chateaux property in Colorado, Kathryn met Canada’s Horse Whisperer, Chris Irwin, the upscale resort’s featured headline clinician, and her life changed forever.  Horse-crazy since a young girl, Kathryn became fascinated by the unique dialogue Chris had perfected in speaking equine body language to horses and communicating those skills to humans.  It opened up a world she had never imagined possible.  In August of 2002, Kathryn took the plunge, leaving her cushy hotel life behind and embarking upon a journey with Chris and the horses in Canada.  They were married in Bermuda in December of 2003. 

Fast-forward five years and Kathryn has now fully reinvented herself.  A featured equine columnist, her monthly column “Ask The Alpha Mare,” appears in equine publications in Canada, California and New Zealand, attracting the questions of women throughout the world who have issues with their horses.  She trains and coaches alongside her husband in his Trainer Certification Program in Canada, the U.S., Holland and Ireland.  For the 2007 calendar year, Kathryn took on a management consulting role at the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center, a Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation facility at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky.   Her passionate affinity for horses, and a special connection with veteran Thoroughbreds from off the track, has taught her that, far beyond metaphor, the lessons learned from horses translate literally into the human leadership and healing arenas.  She is now evolving her perceptions relating to working with mares and women into both a book on “The Alpha-Mare-ian Syndrome” and women’s workshops she calls Equiana.

“The more I work with the horses – especially the mares - the more I bow to their way of showing me, without any issue of political correctness, exactly HOW as opposed to WHO I think I am on any given day.  Be it compassionate and attentive or wimpy, full of hot air, a bully or a sore loser, their honesty is very rare.  They are masters at teaching us how to ‘walk our own talk’ with integrity and dignity - a strong dose of good medicine indeed.”

Chris and Kathryn are currently putting the finishing touches on their own Equestrian Center at their home, Riversong Ranch, a 100-acre wilderness sanctuary located on a pristine wild-and-scenic river between Edmonton and the Canadian Rockies in Alberta.  They plan to open to the public come summer of 2008.