Page 93 - July 2019

If, in the course of owning and insuring a valuable racehorse, you’ve encountered Amy Thornberry with Knorpp Bloodstock Insurance Agency, you’d probably be surprised to learn about her background: Her kind, soft spoken nature belies her grit and fearlessness.
“I think it’s pretty amazing that Amy will go and work cattle and repair water gaps and all the things you do to run a ranch five days a week, and then she works here two days a week in direct contact with our clientele,” says Walt Knorpp. “She’s a pleasure to work with and is very good at dealing with clients in person or over the phone.”
“It takes a certain kind of woman to be
able to deal with people in the horse industry, particularly in the insurance business where you’re dealing with people who might be happy, or might be sad that they’ve lost a horse,” adds Nancy Wise of El Reno, Oklahoma.
“She’s a people person, not a pressure person and that probably relieves a lot of people when she approaches them to buy Knorpp insurance,” Nancy says. “The pressure tactics used by a lot of insurance agents who sell car or house insurance just don’t work with people in the horse industry. And she’s familiar with agriculture and the horse business, which creates an immediate rapport with the people she serves.”
Along with her younger brother, William Charles aka “Carey,” Amy was born to William Don “Sandy” and Bobbie Thornberry in Clarendon, Texas, about 60 miles southeast of Amarillo, where she now works and resides. Her dad runs the family’s Spike A Ranch, raising Hereford and Angus cattle and their resulting Black Baldy offspring while her mom works as executive vice president of the Donley County State Bank, owned by Walt Knorpp, and handles the Spike A’s finances.
Amy attended Baylor University, where
she earned her undergraduate degree in international relations and journalism. One of her professors focused on the Middle East, and before her senior year, Amy went with him and a small group of students on a Baylor in Turkey summer program. “That’s where I was first exposed to the Middle East,” she says.
Although she planned to continue school to obtain her master’s degree in Middle East studies, her cousin, U.S. Congressman Mac Thornberry (R), advised her to work for a couple years to make sure that was what she really wanted.
In 1999, she moved to Washington D.C., where she worked for a couple of Texas’
members of Congress in the legislative branch, then moved over to the executive branch, where she worked for the U.S. Trade Representative at the time, Robert Zoellick. When she decided that she did want to continue in Middle East studies, colleagues recommended that she attend school overseas rather than in the U.S. She was accepted into the American University of Beirut and The American University in Cairo, and opted to go to Egypt.
Amy moved to Cairo in 2002, completed her master’s in 2004 and moved back to D.C., where she spent the next 10 years working for various non-governmental organizations that did democratic governance work all over the world. Because her degree focused on the Middle East, her work kept her focused there as well. “My work was dependent on local need in any given country and the environment there,” she says.
One project, in The West Bank, consisted of training 400 women municipal candidates, 175 of who won their local council seats. Another, also in The West Bank, was helping modernize an independent TV station so it could reach
a larger number of citizens, providing what Amy calls a localized, credible alternative to the existing state-run media outlets.
by Diane Rice
SPEEDHORSE, July 2019 91