The Author: Wanda Smith

Wanda hails from San Francisco where she spent her childhood riding horses in Pacifica during the school season and in Guerneville, Sonoma County during the summers. During the 1970's, she and her family had a Quarter Horse ranch in Bonny Doon near Santa Cruz. In the early 1980's, Wanda lived in Paris, France where she rode horses at the Chantilly Chateau and in St. Moritz, Switzerland. In 1994, Wanda moved to Guerneville and started showing cutting horses. Wanda is the Project Director for the proposed California Equestrian Park and Event Center, a multidiscipline 1,400 acre horse and rider facility in Sonoma County. Stables at Chantilly Chateau, France Riding in St Moritz, Switzerland Riding her Champion Cutting Horse In addition to Horses of the Wine Country, Wanda has authored several other types of books including California Crystals (a compilation of award winning historical poetry), Color (a reference to using color with computers), and a multi media CD, CompuCutting, about Cutting Horses. Wanda also designs web sites specializing in the equine industry. She is currently the President of the Vintage Cutting Horse Association. Wanda's technical background has been in research and development of high technology computer products. She has a Masters Degree in Engineering from Stanford University and was a designer, researcher, and usability engineer at IBM, Hewlett Packard, Charles Schwab, Autodesk, and Intuit. While at IBM she was responsible for the usability design of the now ubiquitous credit card reader, automatic bank teller, bar code reader stations (like those at grocery stores), a typewriter for the blind, and the ticketing system for the BART subway train system in the San Francisco Bay Area. At HP, she created a world wide team of usability engineers that helped elevate HP's scientific and medical instruments and computers to be the easiest to use products in the industry. While at HP, she was honored to be included in the Esquire Registry of 200 people under 40 who were changing America - which also featured Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Joe Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, Charles Schwab, and Sally Ride.