Alejandra "Alex" Abella is an equestrian and animal husbandry specialist, instructor, trainer, and business consultant, currently residing in Spain. An entrepreneur at heart, Alejandra has had many passions and diverse career paths that led her to discover a love of animals, and of equestrian design, planning, programming, operations, management, and teaching/training. Her experiences and self-designed courses, as well as her equestrian and animal programming, business operations and facility planning, follow a theme that has kept constant throughout her life: how do we incorporate living with and through the teachings of animals in our lives?

Alejandra is an American Riding Instructor Association Level III certified instructor and stable manager, a MSA-trained saddle fitter, and an author and illustrator. 

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Alejandra's first university studies were in the fine arts, through which she experienced painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic art, drafting and fashion design and merchandising first in Spain, and then in the United States. The first hint that teaching might be in her future came in 1990, while still in college in the U.S., when she joined her university's Peer Tutoring Program. She graduated Cum Laude with a BA in Studio Arts from the University of Maryland, and years later, while working full time, she began teaching horseback riding as a hobby. She soon became a certified instructor and stable manager, winning the American Riding Instructors Association Instructor of the Year Award in 2004.

While pursuing her hobby on evenings and weekends, her business life started in 1992, with a decade in international development at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC, where she was first hired to perform an inventory of the Bank's art collection. She also assisted in the purchasing of Latin American and Caribbean art for the collection, in addition to assisting in exhibit and event production for the Bank's Cultural Center. From there she expanded into international event and conference organization, and video production and script-writing for social documentaries. The creative and flexible environment of the office taught Alejandra to multi-task and wear many hats, essential skills for an entrepreneur. Alejandra coupled her stint in international development with teaching and studying equine science part-time at night, and she earned a CC in Equine Science, Suma Cum Laude. Shortly after leading the team that won the first Inter-American Development Bank Team Leadership Award, she left the Bank in 2002, to pursue her dreams of working with animals. She went back to school for graduate studies in animal science with a focus on ethology, communication and animal welfare, and a second career in the equestrian and animal industries followed. 

Being fluent in Spanish, English, French and Portuguese  - and with a working knowledge of Italian - Alejandra turned to her love of languages and communication for part-time work during graduate school. She did translation and simultaneous interpretation, and later expanded into teaching languages while her daughter was young. 

After graduate school, she started a company consulting for equestrian clients on teaching, lesson programming, and horse purchases, and ended up joining forces with an equestrian planning and design company, to grow their enterprise from two to over thirty employees in just a few years. As a small business in a niche market, the experience allowed Alejandra to utilize and expand her varied skills into equestrian facility development, marketing, brand building, research, feasibility studies, program design, operations, business and staff management, and client services. Staff and client training sessions reminded her of the love for teaching, and her knowledge of programming allowed for proper reverse-engineering of facility planning and design, with decreased labor and overhead.

In addition to her consulting, instruction, and training work with horses and other animals, Alejandra was also the agent/authorized retailer for County Saddlery, for the territory of Maryland and Delaware, offering sales, saddle fitting services and clinics. She is currently the authorized retailer and saddle fitter for County Saddlery for Spain. For several years until the Covid-19 pandemic, she was the director of an equestrian center with a robust lesson program, and she has been an active competitor and member of the United States Dressage Federation and the United States Equestrian Federation, pursuing her Bronze Medal in dressage. She also still enjoys artwork, writing, and languages, and she has published numerous articles on horses, their management and care, as well as a series of children's books on dog behavior called Stormy Tales, available in both English and Spanish. 

She has been the Education Coordinator for the Maryland Horse Industry Board (MHIB) Advisory Council, and she wrote, hosted a co-produced the documentary short "Why Horses?" for the MHIB. The documentary won the Best Documentary Short Award at the Equus Film Festival in 2021, and Alejandra was awarded the MHIB Touch of Class Award for her contributions to the Maryland horse industry in 2024. She helped found and served on the board of the EquestrAsian Sports Association of Maryland, where she was also the Equestrian Programming Manager.  In the past, she competed in the hunter/jumper and eventing disciplines, and is a past member of the United States Eventing Association, the Maryland Horse Council, and of the United States Hunter Jumper Association, where she originally served on the Horse Welfare Committee.

As the daughter of a diplomat and avid traveler, Alejandra has traveled widely and/or lived in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and the Caribbean.