For Shanette Barth Cohen, it’s easy: When you see a problem, you solve it, even if it’s outside your usual responsibilities. Back in 1997, for example, shortly after she was hired by the American Horse Shows Association (now the U.S. Equestrian Federation) to work as the director of marketing development, the association’s magazine editor quit. Cohen stepped up to put out the magazine that month, despite having no real magazine experience. 

Then there’s the time she was volunteering to prepare food for students in an international intercollegiate riding program, a program she once ran but had since handed off. When the visiting Belgian team found themselves in jail after a flirtation with a park ranger went wrong, she stopped flipping burgers and stepped in to handle the situation for the organizers. 

So when Hurricane Irene came barreling up the coast, heading to Long Island and set to hit Bridgehampton, New York, on the opening day of the 2011 Hampton Classic, Cohen, who serves as the show’s executive director, and the team sprang into action. It had taken professionals a month to put up the tents, stalls, fences and decorations for the eight-day standalone horse show, but two days before the start everything was dismantled and secured against the wind. After the storm blew through, Cohen organized the herculean effort to get it all back up, cramming 30 days of work into one in an all-hands-on-deck affair that started well before dawn. 

“The show secretaries were picking up branches from the rings, and the awards staff helped me hang 200 banners,” recalled Hampton Classic marketing director Reyna Archer. 

“The show manager, Shanette, the vice president of our board—everyone worked really hard. We were able to reschedule almost everything except one class. It was a great team-building effort—not that I would ever want to do it again—but it was a great unified feeling. We all took a picture on the grand prix bleachers of everyone that worked to build the show back up, and Shanette gave some remarks.” 

While Cohen is quick to defer credit to the hard-working show staff who all went above and beyond to get that job done in 2011, Archer pointed out that Cohen’s solution-focused brand of leadership has helped keep the five-star show running smoothly, regardless of inevitable problems that arrive. The Hampton Classic returns Aug. 25-Sept. 1 for its 2024 edition.

“She has a calm demeanor,” said Archer, East Hampton, New York. “She’ll just say, ‘Let’s see how we can fix this.’ I never see her panic.” 

Handling Unique Problems

The Hampton Classic faces a special set of challenges for Cohen, East Hampton, New York, and her team to address. First: the weather. Scheduled in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season and situated on Eastern Long Island, the Classic has had to deal with more than its fair share of storms throughout its history—notably in 2011 and again in 2021, though at least the storm hit the week before the show that year, rather than opening day. 

“Weather is the thing that keeps me up the most,” said Cohen. “You try to anticipate the things you can anticipate, and then deal with issues when they come up.” 

Then there’s the fact that that Hampton Classic is a historical boutique horse show serving multiple populations with diverse needs. There are riders ranging from local devotees to international stars of the sport, around 100 corporate sponsors, including industry regulars and those specific to the Hamptons market, and a slew of VIP table holders, including celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, which requires a sophisticated—and expensive—security presence. In a world where many horse shows are struggling to get spectators, the Hampton Classic sees 50,000 people visit the showgrounds over its eight days. 

“Her style is confident, which is good, and she definitely comes at it from a ‘we need to stay relevant in the ever-changing landscape of this crazy world’ perspective,” said Hampton Classic event coordinator Liz Soroka, who’s been with the organization since 1993. “We tend to be held up as the comparison for a lot of other shows, and we all take that very seriously.”

As other week-long charity shows have struggled to survive in a landscape now ruled by months-long mega-circuits, the Hampton Classic, one of the first competitions designated a Heritage Competition by the USEF, is thriving. 

“There are challenges presented in hiring jump crews and teams of workers,” said individual Olympic gold medalist Joe Fargis, who serves on the show’s board of directors. “Normally they sign up for 12 weeks at one spot. It’s hard to get people for one week, but Shanette juggles all that pretty well.” 

Then there’s the challenge of finding somewhere for that staff to stay. 

“Housing costs to put up staff is four times what it is for other shows in other parts of the country,” said Cohen, “or even the Hamptons in March. It’s so expensive to run our show. Traffic can be really bad. I’m sure every horse show has to deal with town regulations, but we have a lot of regulations we have to follow.” 

But Cohen navigates each of the puzzles with a positive, open-minded attitude, working with the team of capable staff members (“I still sometimes think of myself as the new girl—most people have been here longer than I have, and this will be my 19th year,” she said), the board and the equestrian advisory committee to keep things running smoothly. 

“Her biggest asset may be that she’s smiling all the time,” said Fargis. “It’s hard to get angry with her.” 

From Pony Rides To International Competition

To hear Cohen tell it, she and her twin sister, Claudia Barth, were addicted to horses from the start. 

“We were the kind of kids that at any birthday party or fair that had a pony ride, we’d do it, and then both of us would get to the back of the line and do it over and over again,” said Cohen. “We were obsessed with horses.” 

Their stepfather, Leonard Levine, owned Primrose Farm— located in Katonah, New York, at the current site of Heritage Farm—and they took their first lessons there. Levine also had a connection with the Ward family as he used to own horses for Barney Ward, so eventually they found their way to their barn to ride with his wife at the time, Kris Ward. (At 8 years old they had to audition to ride with her and were accepted.) There they focused on the equitation ring once they outgrew ponies. 

The sisters could afford to compete regularly as juniors thanks to an unlikely event toward the beginning of their lives. When they were around 2, they starred in a commercial for Axion, a pre-wash laundry detergent. 

“They had us eat spaghetti and get really dirty, then they washed our clothes,” said Cohen. “The idea was it’s overwhelming when you have twins, and they make messes, and you should use the detergent.” 

The commercial—and its residuals—paid for their riding careers until they were 15 or so, then they started cutting back on showing. They stuck mostly to one-day shows, aside from the Hampton Classic—Cohen’s first time showing there was 1980 in the medium pony hunters—and a few other nearby competitions. When it came time for college, the sisters headed to Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts) and rode on the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association team. 

Barth won the Cacchione Cup her sophomore year, in 1990, which earned her an invitation to compete on a team in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in an international student world championship (which was won, incidentally, by William Fox-Pitt). Cohen attended as a spectator, but their second week in Europe she got to join a U.S. team in Cambridge, England, and compete in a show run by what’s now called the World University Equestrian Federation, also known as the AIEC (short for its French name, Association Internationale des Etudiants Cavaliers.) 

That trip would prove a turning point for Cohen, who would go on to compete worldwide in the association regularly, which let riders up to 28 years old participate. By her senior year, she was running the organization alongside Kate Candela, a position Cohen would hold for a decade. 

“I organized and was a chef d’equipe for a lot of teams and rode on the team as well for a long time,” said Cohen. “I went to Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Egypt, Ireland—so many places. It was such an amazing experience, and I still have relationships with the people I met at those student competitions.” 

After graduating Cohen spent a few months learning side-saddle with Barbara Clarke, borrowing Patsy Topping’s saddle and habit, and competing at the Hampton Classic the last year the division was held. Then she packed her bags for Washington, District of Columbia, where she’d earned an internship in George Herbert Walker Bush’s political affairs office. After her three-month internship ended, she was hired on as staff, and she spent her weekends hunting with Middleburg Hunt (Virginia). 

After Bush lost the 1992 election, Cohen did a brief stint at a trade association before finding her way back to New York, first as a nanny and then in the political affairs department of a lobbying and marketing firm. She’d started an event planning and event sponsorship firm called the Barth Group LLC, which took on clients like Seagram, Volunteers Of America and Meals On Wheels America, then spent a year at the AHSA during its last year in New York, but declined to move to Kentucky when the organization relocated. It was through her work with the Barth Group that she first met Tony Hitchcock, who with his wife, Jean Lindgren, was the co-executive director of the Hampton Classic, while at the National Horse Show (New York). Little did she know that meeting would set in motion a new path to her life. 

Getting The Job

After Hitchcock and Lindgren announced their impending retirement from the Hampton Classic in the fall of 2004, Cohen was their first call, and they encouraged her to apply for the executive director position. 

“My uncle is Dennis Suskind, the president of the [Hampton Classic] board, so I called him and said, ‘Do you mind if I pursue this?’ ” recalled Cohen, 54. “Of course he’s like ‘Wait, aren’t you 12? Oh, you’re all grown up.’ I said ‘Yeah, I have a lot of relevant experience. I think this could be really good.’ So he recused himself from the process. 

“I was 36, and I looked young for my age,” she continued. “When I’d be interviewed by different members of the board, I was asked frequently, ‘You’re so young; how will you deal?’ I remember one time I was meeting with the whole search committee, and their concern was my age, and that I was going to be meeting with chief marketing officers and big sponsors, and how could little old me do that? Of course they didn’t say it that way. 

“I just said, ‘I’m talking to you, and you’re an impressive group. I will do exactly to them as I will you. I’ll just explain the opportunity. I can’t change my age; that’s a given. But I feel like I have quite a bit of relevant experience.’ I made a case for why I should be a part of the show.” 

In addition to her other professional experience, Cohen pointed to her role with the AIEC, where she would arrange details of the students’ trips: finding housing, getting horses donated, getting sponsors for the teams, sorting out transportation and arranging meals to demonstrate that she was used to working on projects with many moving parts. She also convinced the board that her understanding of the sport—non-horse people were also being considered for the role—was crucial.

And after she was hired in July of 2005, her knowledge of the sport paid off. In 2006 USEF changed its licensing system. Where shows originally received a one-year license, they now had three-year licenses, and the date rotation changed. 

“Every show had to negotiate their dates so that they were on their traditional dates versus the dates they were assigned,” she said. “Being a week after Labor Day for us would have been deadly. It helped to have a horse background to be able to navigate that, and I still knew people who worked [at the federation] because I had worked with them not that long before.” 

Putting Out Fires

As executive director, Cohen assists Archer with securing sponsorships, negotiates contracts with vendors, prioritizes capital improvements and manages staff. She works alongside equestrian manager Stephanie Lightner to produce the show schedule and manage the number of horses attending. 

“This past year we had too many horses, which is a high-class problem, but it’s an actual problem,” said Cohen. “The schooling areas were too congested, and we had to put up an additional tent, so we lost some parking.” 

Once the show starts, she’s mostly putting out fires. Her first year, for example, proved tricky as rain poured down on the showgrounds most of the week and forced the cancellation of some classes. 

But perhaps the biggest challenge came in 2021, a year Cohen called the most difficult year of her tenure. After missing a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show returned to face a hurricane scare the week before the show. Then on the opening Sunday, disaster struck when the newly redone grass footing in the grand prix ring didn’t hold up. 

During the first class, when it was clear the footing was a real problem, she got on the phone with then-equestrian manager Allen Rheinheimer, who confirmed that if they dug up the grass, the footing underneath would be rideable with a little work. After the class Cohen, Suskind, board chair Lisa Deslauriers, board member Georgina Bloomberg and Rheinheimer walked into the ring to assess the situation and decided to dig up the grass. Through Suskind’s connections with a local golf club, they brought in a sod cutter that evening and tore up the ground, and Cohen and the team tweaked the schedule to move the classes that were supposed to be in that ring to others—no small feat with a packed timetable. 

Rheinheimer and his team worked around the clock to prepare the new footing, and by Thursday riders tested out the new surface, giving it the nod, and competition continued in that ring on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 

“In the moment I’m able to stay focused,” said Cohen. “I don’t have real highs and lows; I’m pretty even-keeled. But I’m human. I may or may not have broken down that week, not in the moment, but when I was by myself later.” 

The Hampton Classic Family

One facet of the Hampton Classic that initially attracted Cohen is that it’s a charity show—since 1977 the show has donated more than $2 million to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital—and when she came on board, she created additional programs to give back to the community. 

In 2006 she partnered with local therapeutic riding directors to create the Long Island Horse Show Series For Riders With Disabilities, with the finals to be held at the Hampton Classic. And on the Monday of the show, dog, cat and horse rescues come to show off adoptable animals. Cohen has also prioritized donating prize packs to local or horse-related charities, valued from $140 to $2,500, and she created a program waiving the $20 per car entry fee on Tuesday or Wednesday if you bring three non-perishable food items, which are then donated to local charities. 

Outside of the Hampton Classic, Cohen serves as the vice president of the board for the equine ambulance group Humane Equine Aid and Rapid Transport, and she’s a foodie who enjoys cooking and spending time with her husband, Brian Cohen, who also works for the horse show. 

One phrase you’ll hear tossed around by Shanette and her colleagues is “Hampton Classic family.” 

“It’s a phrase we use a lot to talk about the people associated with our show, whether working here but also people who are regular exhibitors here,” she said. 

“The thing that always made me the happiest when meeting in a big group was when we were talking about an issue, and people started using the word ‘we,’ as in, ‘We should do this,’ ” she added. “Even if they don’t work for us, they’re just someone who brings horses here. I would like to think people think of this as their home show, and I love that.” 

Shanette encourages camaraderie among the staff, and she organizes a squad from the show to attend the annual U.S. Hunter Jumper Association annual meeting (she serves on the WCHR Task Force), scheduling plenty of time for local excursions. In the weeks leading up to the show, there are frequent dinners at the office as the team prepares for the big week. 

“We’re a tight-knit group that have been together a long time,” said Soroka. “We try to do things together, and we trust each other to get the job done. It’s a big job for a small group of people, and we all take it pretty seriously.” 

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A version of this article originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of The Chronicle of the Horse. You can subscribe and get online access to a digital version and then enjoy a year of The Chronicle of the Horse. If you’re just following COTH online, you’re missing so much great unique content. Each print issue of the Chronicle is full of in-depth competition news, fascinating features, probing looks at issues within the sports of hunter/jumper, eventing and dressage, and stunning photography.