Russell Williams – Biography

• Work experience includes being a director and officer of Hanover Shoe Farms for 33 years and a member of executive management for 27. Hanover’s annual budget is larger than the USTA’s, and we have twice as many employees.

• The agricultural model of our business, geared for getting a $12 million foal crop to market, includes a distinct twist: our results in any specific year are based on decisions made more than two years before. Thus our business depends on effective, long-term strategy.

• If we have a secret, it is total dedication to Harness Racing and to the people and horses at Hanover Shoe Farms.

• Our other business is the Standardbred Horse Sales Company, an events business operating a horse sale grossing $50 million annually. Thousands of people and horses convene in Harrisburg for one week each year. The “Harrisburg Sale” is a compelling example of equine event development and delivery-end marketing.

• Before joining Hanover I practiced law and developed a background in accounting. I’m still working full time, so on a typical day I might approve payables, work on a syndicate agreement, sort out a personnel matter, and feed carrots to horses.

• I’m the 401(k) trustee for our companies, and I’m proud that we have a state-of-the-art plan that benefits about 60 eligible employees.

• I’m also proud that we have about 100 retired broodmares. After a career in our broodmare band, they get turned out to just be horses. Reasonable dedication to equine welfare is important to me and, I believe, to our sport.

• I have well over a decade’s experience with lobbying, legislation, and regulation as a Trustee of the American Horse Council.

• I’ve been a force for change in over a decade’s experience as a trustee of the Harness Racing Museum. The Museum is a nimble, outward-looking team that markets itself to the world and promotes our sport.

• I’m active on a number of service-oriented boards. Above all, I’m passionate about public education in the Borough of Hanover. Led by my cousin Peter Sheppard and myself, the Hanover Foundation for Excellence in Education has made the Hanover Public School District a jewel of education in Pennsylvania. Our Metals Technology Department enables students to leave high school career-qualified, graduating with welding certifications and competent in CAD projects, computer milling, and foundry work. Our Integrative Learning Center supports a vibrant STEAM program, with students pushing the envelope in robotics, virtual reality, games design, music technology, and many other areas. Social Media is only the beginning in the Hanover public schools. Our district is fully connected both internally and with a multitude of educators and sites all over the world, and exploits the limits of technology in education.

• I’ve been a Standardbred owner and breeder for 45 years. Nothing too spectacular happened until recently. I became the breeder of the best trotter in the world: Nuncio, 1:50.4 ($3,511,546) (51, 37-12-2).

• Last but not least, I’ve spent twenty years as a USTA Director. I’ve learned a lot about racing and breeding rules, marketing, racetrack operations, wagering, and so forth. We are a forum for new ideas, so there is always plenty to talk and think about. But the deliberative process proves to be the most interesting thing in the long run. I’ve seen countless good decisions made because we have intelligent, experienced men and women on the board who don’t always agree with each other. Two decades on the USTA board has been the best education that an aspiring USTA President could possibly have.

The United States Trotting Association is a vibrant, boundlessly adaptable organization connected to every aspect of harness racing. It is the central nervous system of our sport. Within the limits of law and physics, the USTA exists to do what its members, and ultimately all the participants in harness racing, want it to do.

In its articles of incorporation there is a long and comprehensive description of the USTA’s purposes. Recordkeeping is not mentioned there. The fact that we are, nevertheless, the recordkeeper for the sport and for the Standardbred breed, and that we do it superbly well, is clear and compelling evidence that we have always been intended to be, and have always functioned as, an organization of unlimited potential. The more we open our minds to that potential, escape unnecessary limitations, and listen carefully to our members and our customers (and potential customers), and the harder we work to show the world the excitement and beauty of what we do, the better we will fulfill our purpose.

The USTA president’s powers and responsibilities are spelled out in section 11.04 of our Bylaws. There’s a long list, but the essential language is this:

The president shall have general management of the affairs of the association . . . reporting to the board of directors and the executive committee of the said board.

The USTA president, therefore, is not a ruler (that’s the board), nor is he or she the source of new policies (that’s the board again). The job is nevertheless crucially important: the president must work to inculcate the USTA’s essence – its unlimited potential – into not only the association’s internal workings but also its dealings with the outside world.

Looking now at the board of directors, consider not just its structural authority but also its meaning and importance in harness racing and breeding. Directors come from all over the United States, and we guarantee a measure of geographical diversity by dividing the country into districts, then allocating a certain number of directors to each. Moreover, the distinct functions of track management and horse racing and breeding are recognized by requiring that twenty of our sixty seats are reserved for track representatives. This ecumenical structure might have been one of the wisest things we ever did: whatever happens at the local level, we all sit down together and confer at the USTA.

Our board is sometimes criticized for being too large. We discuss the matter almost every year, but haven’t yet found a beneficial way to shrink it. My question: why should it be smaller? Making it smaller would just make it less representative. Would you eliminate track seats, when there are already more than twenty major tracks? Track management everywhere struggles with unrelated ownership and adverse business conditions: it needs representation on the board. Would you eliminate breeder positions? Few breeders make a profit every year, yet our sport would die without them. They need representation. Would you eliminate horseman positions? Horsemen and horsewomen must care for and exhibit a very unpredictable athlete in an environment of intensive regulation that shifts every time they cross a state border. They also need representation. Instead, what we might work on is requiring the best efforts of every director at all times.

This statement doesn’t contain a list of new programs and panaceas for all our problems, because generating them is not the president’s job. Over my decades at the USTA, I’ve learned that our board and our staff in Westerville are well qualified to carry good ideas forward.
Is the project fully developed? Do we understand it? Clear and beneficial purpose? Any legal issues?

How is the project to be funded? Does the entire membership benefit? Should other entities provide financial support? Funding of projects is a key question at the USTA, which provides a big array of services at a modest cost to its members.

Which projects work best at the national level, which locally, and which requires coordination of both?

Are guidance or synergy available from consulting other associations or outside consultants?

Are all the details of execution identified and organized? Who will have to be talked with before a project goes live?

Are appropriate follow-up measures in the design to ensure long-term success?

The above are some of the stages in establishing USTA policies or products. The president, in my view, is not an inventor. He or she is a supervisor and a facilitator.

I have tried here to boil down the position of USTA president to its barest essentials. In so doing, I’ve tried to show that I understand the position and the USTA very well. My bio and resume show that I have unparalleled experience and can be a dedicated and creative executive. If I am chosen for the position of USTA president, I will do my best to serve both the USTA and our uniquely American equine sport of harness racing, about which we all care so deeply.

EMPLOYMENT

Current

CHAIRMAN, VICE PRESIDENT,
and DIRECTOR* Hanover Shoe Farms, Inc.
1989 to date (Director since 1983)

CHAIRMAN and DIRECTOR Standardbred Horse Sales Co.
1998 to date (Director since 1990)

RACEHORSE OWNER and BREEDER
1972 to date

Horse Industry Organizations

VICE CHAIRMAN and DIRECTOR United States Trotting Ass’n
Elected 1997

TRUSTEE American Horse Council
2005-2016 Chairman 2009-2012

TRUSTEE Harness Racing Museum
2003 to date

MEMBER U.S. Harness Writers Ass’n

Previous Employment

ATTORNEY Sole Practitioner
11-17-88 to 1992 Richmond, Virginia

ASSISTANT PUBLIC DEFENDER Office of the Public Defender
07-01-89 to 01-31-92 Richmond, Virginia

ADJUNCT ASSISTANT University of Richmond
PROFESSOR OF LAW T.C. Williams School of Law
08-25-88 to 05-21-91

LAW CLERK Honorable James R. Spencer
11-03-86 to 09-01-88 United States District Judge

ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL Office of the Virginia Attorney General
12-10-84 to 11-03-86

VIRGINIA STATE BAR
October 1984

UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT BAR
November 1987

SERVICE ACTIVITY

President, Hanover Shoe Farms Foundation, Inc.
1992 to date

Trustee, University of Richmond
2002 to 2006

Director, Hanover Foundation for Excellence in Education, Inc.
2002 to date

Previous

Secretary-Treasurer Pennsylvania Live
1994 to 1997 Horse Racing Council

President and Director World Harness Owners
1993 to 1996 Association

Director, Hanover Area YMCA
1997 to 2003

Volunteer Tutor, Virginia Department of Correctional Education
1987 to 1990

Director, Historical Society of York County, Pennsylvania
1996 to 1999

Board of Associates, University of Richmond
1994 to 1999

EDUCATION

J.D. University of Richmond
May 1984 T.C. Williams School of Law

B.A. University of Virginia
May 1977

Full CPA Curriculum Jefferson Professional Institute

PUBLICATIONS

“Harness Racing Has Some Old Virginia Family,” Hoof Beats, December 1994. Author.

“Procedural Pitfalls in the Court of Appeals,” Outline published in Making an Appeal to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, (Committee on Continuing Legal Education of the Virginia Law Foundation, 1993). Lecturer and Author.

Article on “good faith exception” to the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule, published as: G. Baliles, “When the Constable Has Not Blundered,” Va. L. Weekly, Nos. 20, 21 (1985). Author.

“Some Things Never Change,” Hoof Beats, August 2002. Author.

“Unwanted No More,” Hoof Beats, December 2005. Author.