A Pattern of Harm: Inside the Hostile Work Environment at MKE Urban Stables
Originally published on Heather’s Substack on 11/23/25
On the morning of October 29, 2025, I arrived at Milwaukee Urban Stables expecting an ordinary volunteer shift.
Instead, I pulled into a parking lot filled with unmarked vehicles, masked individuals in tactical gear, and a man wearing fatigues with an “FBI” vest. I was immediately concerned about the vulnerable populations served inside the facility.
After I told the agents that learning and therapy programs happen at the Stables and that they could not stage operations there, they left within minutes.
What happened next — Executive Director Mary McIntosh’s dismissive, confrontational reaction to my concerns; her insistence that the agents “had every right to be there”; her suggestion the activity might continue; and my abrupt dismissal just hours later — is now widely known.
Read the full article here.
After I published that first Substack article about the incident, something unexpected happened: a wave of former stakeholders contacted me privately. Most are people I had never met, who had nothing to gain by doing so, and they all said a variation of the same thing: “What happened to you fits a much deeper pattern.”
Some said they had been waiting for someone — anyone — to speak publicly about the dynamics inside the barn. Others shared stories of being pushed out, demeaned, ignored, or overridden.
Several described experiencing or witnessing behavior they characterized as hostile, dismissive, or retaliatory.
More than one told me they felt relieved someone was finally writing about it at all, because previous attempts to raise concerns internally had gone nowhere.
What I came to understand was that my dismissal was not an isolated incident — it struck a nerve because it reflected a longstanding pattern that many people had experienced but felt powerless to challenge.
A Racist Cartoon the Day Before
On October 28—one day before the ICE incident—Mary McIntosh shared a cartoon on her personal Facebook page depicting Muslims as terrorists (photo attached below).
A former board member – we’ll call her Sarah – who saw the post told me she considered it “blatantly racist” and “completely inappropriate for the leader of a nonprofit serving diverse and at-risk communities.”
“A nonprofit executive has to be squeaky clean. Even if they have strong personal opinions, they need to keep anything controversial to themselves. That’s just part of the job,” Sarah told me.
The Oct. 29 Incident — and McIntosh’s Response
When masked federal agents began gathering in the parking lot at 6:45 a.m., I approached the first one wearing fatigues and an FBI vest. I told him, “We do learning and therapy here—you cannot be here.” He eventually ordered his team out.
When McIntosh arrived later that morning, her first words to me were:
“You had no right to do that.”
She then suggested their presence might have been a “training exercise,” dismissed my safety concerns for the vulnerable populations served on site, insisted it was “private property” where volunteers had no authority to protect the space, and made statements indicating such staging could continue. Finally, she said – twice – to me and Amanda Owen, who was there with me that if we didn’t like it, we could leave and not return.
Four hours later, she dismissed me from volunteering entirely.
Owen was not dismissed. Owen later wrote on a Reddit threat about the incident:
“I was the other volunteer on site that morning…Heather was fired and I was not. There definitely was a double standard. The executive director threatening employees and volunteers is vile and disgusting, inexcusable behavior. The higher ups are the issue NOT the volunteers.”
McIntosh told the board I had violated a “procedure.”
I told board president Ed Krishok no procedure existed; it was only created in new PR materials after the news got hold of this story.
A Former Barn Manager: “Emotionally unsafe…abusive…untenable.”
Of all the messages I received, none was more detailed than the resignation letter from a former barn manager. She asked that I change her name, so I will call her Julie.
She worked directly under McIntosh and resigned a couple of years ago. Her letter, sent to then–board president Kent Lovern, who also happens to be the Milwaukee County District Attorney, reads in part:
“I came to you with a sincere concern about the abusive work environment that I have been subject to…It was very disheartening that my decision to do the right thing was turned around and used against me.
It has created an untenable situation in which I can no longer feel emotionally safe in the workplace due to the behavior of one person, which has been supported by the board.”
Julie described “emotional abuse,” “victim-blaming,” and a complete lack of institutional support after reporting concerns.
“… the people that I brought this information to have not only chosen to support the abusive party, but have chosen to victim blame leaves me with no choice but to part ways with Milwaukee Urban Stables.”
and
“This termination of our working relationship is not what I wanted. But…you have placed me in an untenable situation in which continued employment is not emotionally sustainable.”
In our conversation, Julie added, “(Mary) didn’t respect horse people and she didn’t respect mental-health professionals. Anyone with expertise who questioned her was pushed out.”
Julie has more than two decades of equine experience. A photo of her resignation letter is included below.
A Former Therapist: “She disregarded the professionals.”
A former therapist working with Rawhide’s youth programs also asked that her name be changed. I will call her Laura, and she told me:
“She [McIntosh] disregarded people who actually knew what they were doing. And when concerns about horse welfare or program safety were raised, Mary treated it like a personal attack.”
Laura resigned well before the ICE incident but said the latest controversy “tracks exactly with what I experienced.”
A Former Board Member: “Mary is a bully.”
Few people have McIntosh’s behavior on record as extensively as Sarah, one of MKE Urban Stables’ former board members. She was reluctant to say too much and what follows is what she was comfortable sharing publicly.
Her assessment of McIntosh was blunt.
“Mary is a bully,” she said.
Sarah detailed more than one scenario during which McIntosh was unprofessional or downright abusive. After years of service, Sarah resigned.
“I terminated my relationship with the stables because of Mary’s behavior. I’m very comfortable saying that publicly,” she said.
A Former Strategic Planning and Outreach Contractor: “I saw people leave emotionally hurt.”
Caledonia Village Board Trustee Nancy Pierce has decades of volunteer-management experience and deep ties to southeastern Wisconsin’s equine community, including how to run a therapeutic riding program.
She described a pattern that echoed the concerns of others: decisions about safety, communication, and equine handling were increasingly being made without input from people who had real experience.
Pierce was asked by McIntosh to prepare a contract and scope of work for strategic planning and outreach, which she did and submitted. She offered that all work done up to the date of the contract would be considered a donation.
She noted there were issues early on with volunteer management, which at the time was handled by McIntosh and the program manager. There were definite gaps in training for volunteers who’d never handled horses before, she added.
Pierce also said there were myriad issues relating to the way McIntosh chose to interact with them and the program manager, resulting in volunteers leaving.
“The volunteer turnover rate is high compared to the expectation within the nonprofit community and especially within equine therapy programs,” she said.
One of her primary concerns involved the accuracy of volunteer records. Pierce told me that volunteers were being marked as trained in the internal system even when they had not completed required training.
“It just wasn’t true,” she said, explaining that this created situations in which McIntosh believed people were qualified to assist in equine-assisted learning sessions when they weren’t.
That disconnect, Pierce said, made it difficult and sometimes impossible to ensure that programs were being run safely.
She also described a sudden shift in her working relationship with McIntosh.
Pierce said that after taking a brief trip out of town, “Mary just stopped communicating with me,” and she found herself excluded from conversations and decisions she had previously helped guide.
She told me she has not been involved with the stables since.
While Pierce did not characterize her experience as a hostile workplace, she made clear that the environment had become unworkable: the breakdown in communication, combined with decisions made without equine or therapeutic expertise, ultimately made her not pursue any additional association with the barn.
“It just got to the point where I couldn’t do my job,” she said.
A Former Employee Who Quit Over the ICE Incident
One former employee—who asked that neither their name nor their former title be used—told me they resigned because of McIntosh’s response on Oct. 29:
“Her comments and demeanor were unacceptable. It wasn’t just the ICE thing. It was everything about how she talked to people.”
High Turnover in a Young Organization
MKE Urban Stables is a young organization, opening in 2020, but has experienced a relatively high rate of attrition.
During my conversation with board president Ed Krishok, I noted that the barn is now on its fourth barn manager and at least its third volunteer coordinator.
Krishok pushed back, saying, “I don’t believe we’ve had the kind of turnover you’re describing.”
A staff of five experiencing turnover of three barn managers (60% attrition) and two volunteer coordinators (40% attrition) is far outside industry norms for nonprofit programming or equine-assisted care.
According to Rally Up, nonprofit organizations report turnover rates just over 21% in recent years.
McIntosh’s Lack of Equine & Therapeutic-Program Qualifications
Every equine professional I interviewed raised the same concern: McIntosh was hired to run a horse-based therapeutic nonprofit with no equine background and no therapeutic-programming experience.
Sarah said, “She never respected the expertise of equine professionals.”
Pierce agreed.
“She believed she could just ‘find the programs.’ But without understanding horse welfare or therapeutic structure, she didn’t know what she didn’t know,” she said.
Julie believes McIntosh’s approach is rooted in her lack of experience with horses and therapeutic programming.
“She created an emotionally unsafe environment because she didn’t understand the work and wouldn’t listen to people who did,” she stated.
Laura said the environment McIntosh created wasn’t just harmful.
“She disregarded therapeutic best practices,” she added. “That’s dangerous.”
Milwaukee County Supervisors: An Investigation Is Needed
On Nov. 21, Milwaukee County Supervisors Juan Miguel Martinez, Jack Eckblad, and Steven Shea issued a public statement (photo below) strongly condemning the handling of the ICE incident and calling for:
A full investigation into how ICE agents accessed the property
Accountability for leadership
Support for volunteers acting in the public interest
They also highlighted the safety implications for youth and at-risk clients. Their full press release is also included below.
Board Leadership Has Known for Years
When Julie resigned, Lovern—the Milwaukee County District Attorney—was board president. She addressed her detailed resignation letter to the board but pointed out that she talked with Lovern about McIntosh’s emotional abuse and how the barn was an unsafe workplace.
He remains on the board today.
Multiple sources told me they have raised similar concerns with board leadership over the years—but no meaningful action was taken.
Sarah told me, “They told her to ‘control her temper.’ That was the extent of it.”
Pierce said, “I’ve known for a long time that going to the board doesn’t do anything.”
Lovern has not returned calls for comment.
My Correspondence With Board President Ed Krishok: “This is a personnel matter.”
After my dismissal, I emailed the board describing what had happened, including McIntosh’s comments (photos are part of the first article).
After my conversation with Krishok on Nov. 19, I reiterated my concern that McIntosh remains in her position even after everything he’s learned just since the Oct. 29 incident.
“Your concerns are a personnel matter for us that we are handling through our internal process,” he replied.
A photo of that email exchange is also below.
A Pattern, Not an Incident
After I conducted the interviews with former staff, volunteers, supervisors, equine professionals, and former board members, one conclusion is clear to me:
This is a pattern.
This is long-standing.
And this is known.
A nonprofit built to serve children, veterans, and vulnerable community members cannot function with leadership that:
disrespects equine and therapeutic expertise
retaliates against employees and volunteers
fosters fear and inconsistency
ignores safety concerns
posts racist content publicly
drives out qualified professionals
dismisses or minimizes complaints
encourages emotionally unsafe workplace dynamics
Wisconsin law prohibits hostile work environments that involve intimidation, verbal abuse, or retaliatory behavior. Nonprofits serving at-risk populations must adhere to the highest standards of care—not only for clients, but also for the employees and volunteers responsible for carrying out the mission.
Multiple sources—from seasoned equine professionals to former program staff—told me the same thing in different words:
Mary McIntosh’s leadership is incompatible with the mission of MKE Urban Stables.
Sources on Hostile Work Environment Standards & Wisconsin Law
Federal Standards
1. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) — Hostile Work Environment Definition
https://www.eeoc.gov/harassment
2. U.S. Department of Labor — Workers’ Rights Overview
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/discrimination
Wisconsin-Specific Law & Guidance
3. Wisconsin Fair Employment Act (WFEA)
Administered by the Department of Workforce Development (DWD).
https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/er/civilrights/discrimination/
4. Wisconsin Fair Employment Act — Harassment / Hostile Work Environment Guidance
https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/er/civilrights/discrimination/harassment.htm
5. Wisconsin Statutes § 111.31–111.395 (Fair Employment Act)
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/111/II/31
Nonprofit Leadership & Fiduciary Duty
6. National Council of Nonprofits — Board Responsibilities & Duty of Care
https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/running-nonprofit/governance-leadership/board-roles-and-responsibilities
7. Civic Reinventions — Addressing Executive Director Abuse and Toxicity: A Guide for Nonprofit Boards
https://civicreinventions.com/2024/11/21/addressing-executive-director-abuse-and-toxicity-a-guide-for-nonprofit-boards/