A beautiful property is only ever half of the experience. What turns a stay at Rising Circle Ranch into something people remember is the team – seasoned hospitality professionals, working cowboys, land stewards, and facilitators who each bring years of their craft to the way you’re looked after here.
Rising Circle Ranch began with Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which at one point was the second largest chain of boutique hotels in the U.S. Chip later went on to shape the guest experience at Airbnb. He and his partners bought the ranch with a clear idea of what it could become: a retreat center offering transformative small-group experiences while restoring the land and the people who visit it, in equal measure.
Everything here follows from that vision: the attention to detail, and a team trained to deliver it.
Our hospitality team comes from some of the country’s award-winning restaurants and hotels, and they bring that standard to every stay.
Our COO, Gail DiBerardinis, spent more than two decades in award-winning restaurants and hotels. She has worked in James Beard–honored kitchens and led a hotel that made Condé Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice list three years running. Tara Pyke, our General Manager of Santa Fe operations, built her career from the front desk of a major hotel to running full-scale operations and events. Together they’ve trained a team around a single idea: anticipate what a guest needs before they have to ask.
That’s what your stay feels like here: meals timed to the rhythm of your days, rooms kept to the last detail, and a staff trained to notice what you need. It’s the service you’d expect from a top boutique hotel, brought to a working ranch in the high desert.
The ranch is run by people who’ve spent their lives on the land – cowboys, horsemen, and land stewards restoring the property into a regenerative operation.
Our head of land and livestock is a certified holistic-management teacher who has managed ranches across the West, and he leads a team raising cattle in a way that rebuilds the soil rather than depletes it. Our ranch team has spent their lives at it: a ranch-rodeo competitor who’s qualified for the World Finals nineteen times and trained award-winning Quarter Horses for a decade, a farrier and land steward with a background in biology who reads the grasses and the herd as one connected system, and a born-and-raised Santa Fe cowboy who has guided countless guests through their first-ever ride, meeting each one where they are.
Together they run the horsemanship, the regenerative grazing, and the guest experiences – trail rides, cattle drives, and carriage rides behind our team of Percherons. They’re also, simply, wonderful company around a fire.
Ranch Manager
Ranch Lead
Ranch Program & Horsemanship Lead
Land Steward, Horseman, Musician
If you’d like expert guidance woven into your stay, our content and experience facilitators bring years of experience leading retreats, trainings, and workshops.
They can open a morning with a circle gathering to start the day with openness and trust, guide a rejuvenating sound bath or mindful movement activity, and lead sessions on purpose and communication, drawing on decades of work in somatic practice and human development.
Every session is shaped around what your group came to do and woven into your days.
The best way to understand the team is to spend a few days with them. Come see the ranch and meet the people who run it.