Catherine Haddad began her relationship with horses at the age of six and never looked back. Raised in St. Louis, Michigan, by a Lebanese father whose own story was one of extraordinary determination, born in the mountain village of Ain Dara, the first of his village to attend university, a surgeon educated at the American University of Beirut and the Royal College of Surgeons in London, Catherine inherited both his discipline and his ambition.

She earned her degree in International Relations with a minor in Arabic language, graduating with honors, before making a decision that would define her life: she boarded a plane to Germany with one bicycle, two horses, and $3,000, and stayed for twenty years.

Based in Vechta, Germany, she trained under the late Willi Schultheis, one of the most revered masters in the history of classical dressage, and later with Rudolf Zeilinger and Morten Thomsen. Under their tutelage she built a record that speaks for itself: 135 international Grand Prix placings and wins with seven horses, competed at Aachen, Falsterbo, Rotterdam, and Hickstead, represented the United States in Nations Cups at the world's most prestigious venues, reached the FEI World Cup Finals twice, and was twice named to the United States team for the World Equestrian Games. She earned gold medals from both the U.S. Dressage Federation and the German Federation.

She returned to the United States in 2012 and established elite training programs at Khiimori in Califon, New Jersey, and her Florida base in Palm City. What followed was not simply a continuation of her competitive career but an expansion of her life's work. Catherine has coached numerous riders to Grand Prix and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished trainers in the sport. Her teaching is rooted in classical principles passed down through the great European masters, with the welfare of both horse and rider at its absolute center. She believes that correct training and compassionate horsemanship are never in conflict. They are, in fact, the same thing.

In 2021 she co-founded NorCordia, the world's first sport horse investment portfolio company, bringing four decades of elite expertise to a new dimension of the industry.

The people who know Catherine best will tell you that after a full day of riding and teaching, she cooks Lebanese food for everyone at her table. That is who she is: a woman who has spent a lifetime at the top of high-performance sport and still believes that the most important thing she can offer is presence and an open door. She lives by Buddhist principles of intentionality and awareness while moving through the world with cultural curiosity and an insistence on authenticity that shapes everything she does, in the saddle and out of it.

When she declared for Lebanon in 2023, it was not a statement, but rather a connection to the two halves of herself in the same arena. Her father's country and her life's art.