Our Board

FOUNDER
BOARD CHAIR
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Brooke Clay Taylor has made a life of clearing hurdles. But she’d be the first to tell you she didn’t jump a single one alone.

Born into a farming family in Franklin, Ind., and raised on a ranch in Perkins, Okla., anyone reading the plot to date might’ve said Brooke’s story was more Lifetime than real-life, more Hallmark than even half-believable.

When a high school guidance counselor told Brooke her average grades and would-be first-generation college student status made her a better candidate for job training than higher education, Brooke leaped anyway. She landed with bachelor’s and master’s degrees and firm footing for a career in strategic communications.

Her career, and later, love, took Brooke from Oklahoma City to Charlotte, Austin to Nashville. She left Music City for Payne County when the fairy tale proved fiction, trading the keys for a middle-Tennessee Craftsman to a red-dirt-speckled horse barn. With three figures in her bank account, Brooke jumped again: This time to launch Rural Gone Urban, a strategic communications business to support farmers, ranchers and agriculture clients worldwide with her digital prowess.

She married Damon — a fellow Perkins kid and junior high crush come full circle — in a snow globe scene, and together, they made a home on the shores of Lake Tenkiller in Eastern Oklahoma. The next summer, they welcomed their daughter, Elsie, the same day Brooke was diagnosed with breast cancer. Despite extensive treatment and being declared cancer-free, it returned two years later.

Whether in finding the courage to take the first step into a lecture hall she allegedly didn’t belong or the infusion center to face another round of chemo, Brooke credits her support system for never letting her fall. She founded the Rural Gone Urban Foundation to help women jumping hurdles — the B students, the big dreamers, the start-overers, and especially the women in the ring with cancer — who don’t have the support that has propelled her at every leap.

VICE CHAIR

Stephanie Sharp Gibbs, vice chair, is a graduate of Perkins, Okla., where, in the sixth grade, she and Brooke started a lifelong friendship thanks to neighboring lockers.

The expense of higher education prevented Stephanie from taking a direct path to a degree, so instead, she earned a cosmetology license following high school. She worked behind the chair at a Stillwater salon until setting her shears down in 2013 to attend nursing school. With that foundation in health, wellness, and helping others feel their best, Stephanie co-founded launched Flourish & Fitness and Tulsa Blooms, businesses that combine her passions for encouraging people to flex their minds and move their bodies.

TREASURER

Leah Beyer is a native of rural Illinois, a Hoosier by choice, and an agricultural communications maven. After earning a pair of degrees in agricultural economics and education, Leah was sure she’d left milking cows on her family’s Illinois farm in her rearview mirror — only to find herself marrying into a dairy operation in Indiana. The Beyers’ cows eventually gave way to soybeans and corn, but Leah’s off-farm career in ag-centric public relations and digital media soon eclipsed the time needed to care for crops.

Today, she leads marketing efforts for a crop science company and, in her spare (internet) time, shares her favorite kitchen creations on Beyer Eats & Drinks.

There may be no prouder son of Vian, Okla., than Kenyatta Wright. A four-year starter for Oklahoma State University and veteran of the NFL, Kenyatta knew there was only one place to raise his children after hanging up his cleats: home.

In his lakeside, Oklahoma town of Vian, Kenyatta is a four-time business owner of companies ranging from construction to custom screen-printing, a volunteer high school football coach, and an unapologetic advocate for his community.

Kenyatta credits the Vian community and OSU Cowboy football family with molding him into the man, husband, and father he is today and is passionate about helping young people find pathways to higher education.

Ree Drummond launched her career blogging about life as a cattle rancher’s wife, home chef, and homeschooling mother. Now better known as The Pioneer Woman, the self-described “accidental country girl” first met Brooke in the late ’00s before cookbooks, magazines, or ad space on personal websites.

Following graduation from her Bartlesville, Oklahoma, high school, Ree left the plains for the University of Southern California. The Windy City called her name next, but fate had other plans: a ranch in Northern Oklahoma’s Osage County.

Sharing her crash course in ranch life with the internet may have launched a global brand, but today, Ree’s impact is palpable at home. Her dedication to rural development has transformed the 3.8-square-mile town of Pawhuska and inspired countless others to invest their time and energy in the area’s betterment.

Damon Taylor is Mr. Wildlife. An outdoor enthusiast, Damon grew up on his family’s ranch in Perkins, Oklahoma, and thought he’d follow in his mother’s footsteps with a career in finance. But as a senior in high school, the avid hunter, angler, and country-road-explorer recognized he was just happier outside. That led him to Oklahoma State University and a degree in wildlife ecology. Following posts with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Minnesota, Montana, and Nebraska, Damon found his dream job with the USFWS as a refuge manager for Oklahoma’s Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge.

His boomerang back to the Sooner State was well-timed: Brooke, the girl he’d loved since junior high, had just made her way back to red dirt, too. This time, he reeled her in.

Cindy Blackwell has devoted her career to higher education, and it was while Cindy was on faculty at Oklahoma State University that she first met Brooke. Teaching in the Agricultural Communications program at Oklahoma State, Cindy worked to develop students’ understanding of how to share the important stories about agriculture, while also challenging students to examine their beliefs about agriculture to strengthen those beliefs. It is always amazing for Cindy to see former students making incredible contributions to society, like Brooke’s Rural Gone Urban blog becoming the values-drive Rural Gone Urban Foundation.

Cindy and her husband have come full circle relocating from Texas to Oklahoma to Mississippi and back to Texas. In addition to serving on the RGUF Scholarship and Love Bombs committees, Cindy currently uses her teaching experiences to support other college faculty in improving their instructional quality.