Barnabas Staff & Board of Directors
Sue McKinney is the Founder, President, Program Director, and lead Equine Professional at Barnabas Horse Foundation in Myrtle Beach, SC.
In the midst of a trial no family should ever have to experience, God placed a vision on her heart she could not ignore. Knowing firsthand the trauma of sexual assault, she combined her love of horses and empathy for hurting people and began Barnabas in 2011. In the third year of operation, Barnabas caught the attention of the SC Attorney General’s Office and is the proud recipient of the Victims of Crime Act grant for six consecutive years, enabling Sue and the BHF team to continue to solidify and grow the trauma-focused equine-assisted psychotherapy program.
Sue, a certified life coach, has been a Natural Lifemanship Equine- Assisted Therapy practitioner since 2014 and is currently a NL certification student. Her past certifications include PATH International Equine Specialist in Mental Health and Learning and OK Corral Series. Her tireless efforts to bring healing to her community helped open the door to her being a breakout presenter at the National Sexual Assault Conference in Philadelphia in 2019. She was also a breakout speaker for Natural Lifemanship’s Annual Conference in 2020 and 2021. Sue’s ethical treatment of all creatures earned BHF six years of nominations for Myrtle Beach Area Non-Profit of the Year, along with winning an Ethics in Business Award for Non-Profits in 2017. Most recently, she was nominated as a “Relentless Legend” by her community for her work at Barnabas helping survivors of crime. Her most recent certification is as a Victim Service Provider through the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.
She is a wife and mother of 5 and still manages to lovingly serve her clients 100%. Her strong and powerful presence and voice has helped bring awareness to the sexual assault and sex trafficking epidemic in the community and encourages people to take a stand against this atrocity.
She is a strong woman of faith, a woman who leads by example, and a friend who will tell you what you need to hear, not just what you want to hear.