New Jersey trainer Nicole Delgiorno has taken over as president of Dressage at Devon, the special autumn show that offers educational opportunities — such as a popular master class — as well as a variety of competition and lots of shopping..
She succeeds Anne Moss, who presided over the show’s fiftieth anniversary last year. Nicole, who has showed at the Pennsylvania fixture since she was a junior, is 34 years old, representing another generation that will guide the iconic institution on Philadelphia’s Main Line into new opportunities.
While a priority naturally involves appealing to an equestrian audience, one of Nicole’s goals as she stated during an interview is that “we start to bring in more of a non-equestrian audience.”
She pointed out, “It’s the only place where a kid who had never touched a horse before can sit five feet away from a horse that is piaffing and have that moment of `Oh my gosh, that is what i want to do.’
“There aren’t many (dressage) spectator experiences on the East Coast outside of going to Florida, especially in our area, that are so welcoming to a non-equestrian audience,” Nicole said.
As she pointed out, Devon is “very accessible from Philadelphia, a very highly populated area.”
With “Lots of young families looking for ways to get their kids out and about, It would do our sport, especially locally, such a good service to be able to lean into those audiences and try to get them more involved and feel like they also belong at Dressage at Devon.”
In honor of the show’s half-century anniversary, $160,000 was donated, money that will go toward its long-term sustainablity.
A Grand Prix rider who is a U.S. Dressage Federation gold medalist, Nicole runs The Dressage Academy in Cream Ridge, N.J. She has been on the Devon board for three years, and a new group has been recruited for that panel to offer a forward-looking perspective and raise funds. Nicole also has experience in the fields of fundraising, strategy and technology.