Lisa Gorretta grew up in Chagrin Falls Ohio where she still resides. She started riding as a child at the Red Raider Camp & School of Horsemanship, where she received a well-rounded riding education in hunt seat and combined training. Participating in student organized schooling shows provided both competition experience and an early exposure to working behind the scenes with competition management. Lisa competed with tepid success in Junior through Regular Working Hunters and fondly remembers spending much of the summer of 1973 working on the grounds crew of the Chagrin Valley PHA Horse Show: home of the Cleveland Grand Prix. In that era, the crew, under the direction of Mr. Charles “Chuck” Kinney, was responsible for everything from putting up all of the temp stalls, to painting the show fences and working on jump crew for classes that attracted many of the top hunters & jumpers in North America. It was also a great place to learn to drive a stick shift truck: a necessary life skill for every serious equestrian.

Lisa’s riding interests turned seriously to Dressage post college. (There was a very brief fling with fox hunting with the Chagrin Valley Hunt.) As an Adult Amateur competitor, she has earned her USDF Bronze and Silver medals and competed to Intermediare I. Lisa is still an active rider, with her now retired competition horse.

A 1976 graduate of the Ohio State University College of Agriculture, Lisa started “Paddock Products”, a horse products manufacturing and distribution company, as a division of her family’s manufacturing company, in Cleveland Ohio. When the company was sold in 1984 she founded “The Paddock Saddlery”, a sport horse specialty tack shop of which she was the President until she sold the business in 2013. Lisa is the President and CEO of “The Paddock Group LLC”, a multi-faceted consulting services company she started n 2011, that works with retail, manufacturing, and wholesale companies in the equine industry.

Lisa has been a Licensed Official for over 30 years; as a Steward (retired), R Dressage Technical Delegate, and Level 2 FEI Steward for Dressage. (She was a Steward at the 2015 Pan Am Games and was the Deputy Chief Steward for Dressage at the 2016 Olympic Games.) As a licensed official, Lisa believes in making a conscious effort to have a connection with the full range of participants in her sport. In any given year, she interacts with members and non-members at competitions from a two ring Level 2 dressage show to a CDI-O in Wellington, the Festival of Champions or Dressage at Devon.