At age 7, Nikki started pursuing her horse passion and began taking riding lessons and learning how to care for horses.  Three years later Nikki got her first horse, Sparky - a very patient and well-mannered horse which she bought from Thad Nymeyer (former owner of Red Oaks).  It was this same year (2003) that Nikki started working at Red Oaks, cleaning stalls and feeding horses. Also in 2003, Nikki started showing horses in several different classes, including western pleasure, horsemanship, trail, showmanship, and halter.  

In 2005, Nikki began working with horses several days a week at Claybrook Stables - her family’s horse facility in Indiana.  That same year Nikki got her second horse, ‘Buddee’ (who 17 years later would be the horse she would ride into her wedding).  A year later, Nikki rescued her first horse, ‘Hunter’ - a wonderful sorrel and white paint.  

After receiving her Veterinary Assistant Diploma in 2007, Nikki began breeding, raising and training horses.  Fast forward to 2017 when, after graduating with honors from Bob Jones University with a B.S. in Accounting, Nikki started working as an auditor at KPMG (one of the largest accounting firms in the world). In 2019, Nikki transferred from KPMG to the US firm, Cherry Bekaert and continued her work as an auditor until 2022. During her corporate career Nikki audited a wide range of companies from some of the largest publicly traded companies to local family owned businesses. Nikki audited businesses across many industries, including: Automotive, Restaurant/Food Service, Oil and Gas, Medical/Hospitals, Biomedical, Manufacturing, Education, Real Estate and Finance. Auditing such a wide variety of companies has given Nikki unique insights into the challenges and opportunities of building businesses of all sizes.