Lily’s Wild Heart
Board Member Profiles
The people advocating for wild mustangs and burros on American public lands.
Stephanie Milton
Founder
Stephanie’s horse experience began in childhood at a traditional lesson barn with ponies named Orbit, Shiloh, and Miss Piggy (a favorite). She has had both joyful and heart-rending experiences in the horse world, both in show barns and as an amateur. She worked as a breeding manager for one of the most eminent Morgan saddle seat barns in the country and saw the glamor of the win and the truth of its underbelly. Deciding to become a one-horse person was where her happiest moments with equines unfolded and her venture into the world of mustangs took root.
Stephanie, like so many others, was enamored with the tenacious spirit of the American mustang, its diverse and inimitable beauty, its hardy and hale independence. She adopted her first mustang in 2022, an unknown, Sand Wash Basin 11-year-old gelding who arrived in sanctuary with the bay markings on his muzzle in the shape of a heart and a five-inch gauge under his right eye in the shape of a cross. That is where real learning began.
The following years saw her educated on the realities of the lives of horses and burros in the wild, the problematic history they inherited after the Wild and Free-Roaming Wild Horses and Burros Act of 1971, the current warehousing of tens of thousands of horses and burros, the successes and failures of gentling equids, and their vulnerability to being slaughtered in Mexico and Canada. Two mustangs later, Stephanie met with her Congressional Representatives’ offices on Capitol Hill, protested outside of the Department of the Interior, and started a 501c3 non-profit, named after her mare Lily. Given the tenuous future of wild mustangs and burros on American public lands, she is fully committed to advocating for them through all avenues, one of which is the most promising, empathic, and scientifically grounded: positive reinforcement.
Dr. Yvette Dodson
Vice President
[Bio coming soon]
Julie Nation
Treasurer
[Bio coming soon]
Joanna Bonalewicz
Secretary
[Bio coming soon]
Kristal Bonalewicz
Member-At-Large
[Bio coming soon]
