About Us

She is an accredited Experiential Learning with Horses Instructor who graduated from the Eponaquest Program in Tucson, AZ in 2005 and became a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner® in 2015 and completed her Level I IFS training in 2017.

Prior to returning to a life centered around working with horses, she was a professional coach and facilitator who has taught leaders and individuals how to ‘take back the reins’ in their own lives. She’s coached young people and adults through transitions from school to careers, recovery to sobriety, burnout, compassion fatigue and transitions at home and work.

In 2009, she and David Sonatore, LCSW learned about the rising suicide rate among veterans and decided to focus their attention on this group of men and women who were often resistant to talk therapy and whose symptoms were often only masked by medication. They based their program on what they had learned at Eponaquest Program, Somatic Experiencing® and work with Buck Brannaman, whose approach to horsemanship fits perfectly with the healthy, authentic relationship tools they teach at The Equus Effect.

Jane is a Certified Enneagram Teacher, has studied with the Coaches Training Institute, the Center for Authentic Leadership and the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.

Since The Equus Effect’s inception in 2012, Jane and David have broadened the reach of this work to include law enforcement, firefighters, frontline health workers and people in recovery from substance abuse. To date, they have seen over 2,500 men and women who understand the value of this type of empowering work that helps build capacity for healthy, authentic relationships.

In response to the success and advocacy from clinicians and veterans themselves, the VA and a team of clinicians and analysts at Yale have just completed a pilot study of this curriculum among a trans-diagnostic sample of veterans and results will be published in the fall of 2023.