Mary Catherine Harcourt
In Town: Mary Catherine Harcourt works for CCOA, Credit Counseling of Arkansas, in Fayetteville, Ark. She has been there for 13 years. She started as a client support representative and worked her way into the position of Director of Financial Systems. CCOA is a local non-profit agency that helps people with their finances as far as budgeting, credit counseling, mortgage delinquency, housing pre-purchase, bankruptcy counseling and a debt management program that can lower payments and interest rates. They also do a lot of community education. “People get so distraught over their finances and think it is hopeless. It’s not. There is help out there. We give people hope. We let them see there is a light at the end of the tunnel and a way to work out of it. Why wouldn’t you want to go to work knowing you are going to have an impact on someone’s life?” Mary Catherine said.
In the Country: Mary Catherine was born and raised in Little Rock around quarter horses. Her family moved to northwest Arkansas 13 years ago. Mary Catherine’s oldest daughter, Amanda, is with the Rodeo of the Ozarks Rounders. “She has been a Rounder for 10 years now. She also barrel races and we show our quarter horses. My two sons, JC and Chad, have done some bareback riding. We have done a little of it all. I was pretty much just the horse mom for a lot of years. In the past three years, I have gotten back into riding myself, doing some team penning and barrel racing. We travel a lot with the Rounders. Between now and the end of summer we will hit several rodeos and the horse festival at the University.”
What is your biggest challenge?
“The biggest challenge for me is that I live in town and don’t have my horses right here. It makes it a challenge getting out there to take care of them and to really have all the time you want to spend with them. I would like to have a place where we could have the horses live with us, and to have a better place to ride.”
By Pam Lamb
