My Veterinary Life

“So what I know for sure is that people in certain circumstances, they do feel stuck sometimes. And I want to, you know, really remind everyone that there are always options. So, this might entail really taking a look at your life, reviewing what you value the most, it may mean accepting less pay and making lifestyle changes accordingly. However, I feel there are always options.”Our guest today is Dr. Laura Catena. Dr. Catena is the founder and creator of ArmOR Hand Gloves. How she got here was not a straight path at all and she had several challenges, including two difficult pregnancies that led to a change in working conditions and a potentially career ending injury. Rather than letting these hurdles get in her way, Dr. Catena decided to make the best of it and while she was in the hospital the idea for her product came to her to help protect veterinary professionals and the pets we care for. We were so inspired by her positive attitude and her ability to be open to opportunities in front of her. We are so

Our guest today is Donja Pettiford. Donja has dreamed of becoming a veterinarian for most of her life. However, sometimes life doesn’t always go as planned, and she has made the most of the opportunities she has been given all while continuing to work towards the goal of being accepted into veterinary school. Currently, Donja is working as a technical trainer with the USDA-FSIS and tells about the critical role she plays in food safety. She also shares how she became connected with the Black DVM Network and Pride VMC. We had a blast chatting with her and are so excited to share her journey with you! Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcast

“The other practice part, I was able to assemble a team that complimented me, my style. My business partner definitely knew the business.”Our guest today is Dr. Kathy Jonokuchi. Dr. Jonokuchi has had an incredible career! She continues to find new ways to challenge herself and give back to this profession. While many of her classmates are working towards retirement, it seems like Dr. Jonokuchi’s career is full steam ahead. We had a blast chatting with her and were only able to scratch the surface of some the things she has going on right now. We are excited to continue to follow her journey and share this small piece of it with you! Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcastIf you are interested in learning more about Dr. Jonokuchi’s art work, please follow this link: https://www.kathyjonokuchi.com/

“It’s fun because people think that you know what you are going to do, and you follow that path and it really wasn’t that direct of a path. I mean Veterinary Medicine, for sure. I knew that from the beginning but all through vet school I planned on being a dairy practitioner.”Our guest today is Dr. Cindy Otto. Dr. Otto is the executive Director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center. We had the best time discussing all about how she go to this point in her career. Spoiler alert! It wasn’t a straight shot. She has spent much of her career carving out her niche and finding her place in this profession. We loved learning about her finding her internship and pursuing a PhD as well as what drew her to teaching. It is a wonderful conversation and we are so excited to share this journey with you! Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #My

Welcome to our final episode in a special My Veterinary Life Podcast miniseries in collaboration with our friends at National Veterinary Associates. Joining us for these conversations is Turpin Mott. Turpin is the Chief Community Officer for NVA. His focus is spreading positive wellbeing and culture initiatives throughout the veterinary profession. We are talking culture today! How do you identify a culture that is right for you? What questions can help you uncover the culture of an organization during an interview process? We learn so much throughout this conversation and are so excited to share this journey with you!Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcast

“I feel that my success, a lot of my future success, is because I had such good mentoring at the beginning of my career.”Our guest today is Dr. Alicia Ruiz. Dr. Ruiz. Dr. Ruiz found her passion for veterinary medicine at an early age and never looked back. Through support of family, educators and great mentors, she is living her dream every day. Her story is so refreshing and full of joy that we couldn’t stop smiling throughout the entire interview. We are so excited to share this journey with you. Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcast

Welcome to a special episode of My Veterinary Life Podcast. This is part three of a four-part miniseries with our friends at National Veterinary Associates. Joining us for these conversations will be Turpin Mott. Turpin is the Chief Community Officer for NVA. His focus is spreading positive wellbeing and culture initiatives throughout the veterinary profession. We are talking emotions today! What role do emotions play in your life? What about in how you respond to different situations? How can we distinguish between emotions and behavior? We talk about this and how to accept emotions without judgment. It’s a great conversation and we are so excited to share this journey with you!Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcast

“I never really considered vet medicine because I never thought I could get in, because I knew how difficult vet school was. And then after doing some hard thinking, I think I decided that if I really wanted to do it, I can do it and I was very fortunate that Otterbein has an equine program geared toward, to get students into veterinary school. So, I had no equine experience prior, but I met with my advisor, and she said if I really want to do it, I can do it! So I jumped right in and got to learn about horses and that got me through within three years and now I’m at Ohio State!”Our guest today is Jordan Riha. Jordan is a second-year veterinary student at The Ohio State University. While she may have decided she wanted to become a veterinarian a little later in life, that has not slowed her down at all. She has taken advantage of every opportunity that has been put in front her and done it all with a positive attitude. We are so excited to watch the rest of her career unfold and can’t wait to share her journe

Welcome to a special episode of My Veterinary Life Podcast. This is part two of a four-part miniseries with our friends at National Veterinary Associates. Joining us for these conversations will be Turpin Mott. Turpin is the Chief Community Officer for NVA. His focus is spreading positive wellbeing and culture initiatives throughout the veterinary profession. Today’s topic is Life Filters. Have you ever wondered why you see the world the way you do? What has shaped you into the person you are today? We dig into this topic and why it matters in both your personal and professional life. We are so excited to share this conversation with you!Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcast

“It’s a great career, because I could just go forth and just dabble in some relief work from time to time and do some speaking and do this and do that and you can kind of make it whatever you want it to be. You could do full time relief, or you could speak sometimes. I think it is a cool career because you can tailor it to what you want it to be.”Our guest today is Dr. Addie Reinhard. We had a blast chatting with her and learning about where her career in veterinary medicine has taken her. She has gone from small animal private practice to now working towards her Masters in Community and Leadership Development. She also still does relief work, writing and speaking engagements. We love how she has really made this career her own and cannot wait to share her journey with you! Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVL

Welcome to a special episode of My Veterinary Life Podcast. We are embarking on a four-part miniseries with our friends at National Veterinary Associates. Joining us for these conversations will be Turpin Mott. Turpin is the Chief Community Officer for NVA. His focus is spreading positive wellbeing and culture initiatives throughout the veterinary profession. Today’s topic is Whole Person. We have a great conversation and learn how to reframe some ways of thinking that can help us embrace who we are and further our journey to better personal AND professional wellbeing. We are so excited to share this conversation with you!Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcast

“It’s never too late to take a pivot. It’s never too late to take a career change. You don’t ever have to be stuck. Anytime you find yourself saying the shoulds- well I should like this I should be successful I should be doing this- you need to reevaluate and step back.’”Our guest today is Dr Hayley Adams. Dr. Adams has had an amazing career which has encompassed so much of veterinary medicine. Her primary focus has been wildlife conservation. She has traveled the world and spent quite a bit of time in Africa and even written a book! She is board certified in visionary preventive medicine and veterinary microbiology and has a PhD in Veterinary Comparative Medicine. We learn so much throughout this conversation and we can’t wait to see what is next for Dr. Adams. We are so excited to share this journey with you!Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on S

“You can kind of tailor your experiences and that’s what I would encourage anybody interested in veterinary medicine to do, is to really…don’t just go in and kind of get it all knocked out, really try to gain a wide breadth of experiences so you really know what you want to do.’”Our guest today is Dr. Simuel Hampton. Since graduation in 2012 Dr. Hampton has worked as a shelter veterinarian, first at that Anti-Cruelty Society in Chicago and now with One Tail at a Time. He shares some of the challenges he has experienced with shelter medicine and some of the parts he enjoys the most. We also talk about managing educational debt, especially being married to another veterinarian, and starting his own mobile practice. We even share at least one story from undergraduate days where Dr. Hampton and Dr. Kirk, one of our co-hosts, spent a lot of time together. This is a great episode full of a lot of laughs and a lot of insights. We are so excited to share this journey with you! Remember we want to hear from you! Pleas

“If you have this problem that you are trying to solve, just keep trying to remove roadblocks until you get there because It’s really shown me that if you put your mind to it, you really can figure anything out.’”Our guest today is Kate Parker. Kate is a hospital manager and partial owner at Animal Urgent Care in Arvada, Colorado. She joins us to talk about a counseling program she worked hard to bring to her clinic. It is incredibly inspiring to hear about the challenges she faced and how she overcame them as well as the amazing benefits they are already seeing from this program. We were so inspired by her dedication and compassion and know you will be too! We can’t wait to share this journey with you. Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcast

“I mean they had already had things like Anatomy. I think there is just certain bonding that comes from being in the anatomy lab in the wee hours of the night and smelling like formaldehyde that I didn’t get to have with that class. And I was really afraid of also being an older person with already a doctoral degree.’”Our guests today are Dr. Valerie Marcano and Dr. Seth Andrews. Our focus in this episode is mentorship and the important role it can play in any career! We learn about how they each came to the veterinary profession, or the veterinary adjacent profession, and the influence mentors played in each of their paths. We discuss the importance of diversity in veterinary medicine and how mentorship can influence this, especially in underrepresented groups that may not see veterinary medicine as an option. They share with us how the idea for their mentorship organization, Pawsibilities, came about and what is next for them. We have a great time chatting with them and are so excited to share this journey

“The veterinary degree is so flexible and so useful, and it gives such a broad exposure to all these different topics. I wish I had known what opportunities were available to me when I left school. And to be fair, people told me, I just didn’t believe them, I just thought, I had this idea in my head ‘You know what, I’m going to be a clinician and that is it.’”Our guest today is Dr. Will McCauley. Dr. McCauley is a 2012 Graduate from Texas A and M University College of Veterinary medicine. He also received a Master’s in Business Administration form Texas A & M. After graduation, he completed a rotating internship and then spent time in small animal private practice before transitioning to his current role as the Director of Veterinary Biologics with the Animal Health Institute. We learn how he learned about this position and the important role volunteering has played in his career. We also touch on wellbeing in the veterinary profession, his pet pig, Piggy Azalea, and much more! We are so excited to share

“I feel like the MPH is a degree that anyone needs if you are going to try to understand people and how they work.”Our guest today is Dr. Tierra Price. Dr. Price is a 2020 graduate from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. Not only does she have her DVM, but she also completed her MPH while in school. As we recorded this episode, she was 1 day into her big move out to California to start her first job as a shelter veterinarian for the ASPCA. Dr. Price’s name may be familiar to you as she is also the founder of the BlackDVM Network, an organization that supports and connects black veterinary professionals. They have been making huge contributions to this profession! We learned so much about the mission of this organization and why it is so important, but we don’t stop there. Our conversation takes us all over the place, from dancing, to Netflix shows to organizational skills. This is an episode you won’t want to mis and we are so excited to share this journey with you!Remember we want to hear

“How did I end up as president? I think it’s one of those things where, you’re in a Zoom call, you make eye contact for too long. And then there is that long pause…’ok…so…. who wants to do this next’” Our guest today is Dr. Tina Tran. Dr. Tran is an Associate Professor and Clinical Relations Lead Veterinarian for the University of Arizona. Her career has taken her from small animal practice to academia, to business ownership and back to academia. It is so fun to hear about all the opportunities she has pursued and how she found each of them. We also talk about her volunteer work, specifically focusing on how she became president of the Multicultural Veterinary Medical Association. We had a blast chatting with Dr. Tran are so excited to share this journey with you!Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcastTo l

Today we are joined by two very special guests. Dr. Carlos Risco is currently a Professor and Dean at Oklahoma State University, Center for Veterinary Health Sciences. Dr. Kemba Marshall is a previous guest of My Veterinary Life Podcast (see her episode from March 2019) and is a Director of Veterinary Services for Land ‘O Lakes Purina. Our focus in this episode is around participating in tough conversations relating to diversity in veterinary medicine. We are so grateful that they were able to share their own experiences and perspectives and help us continue the conversation about race, diversity, inclusion in equity in veterinary medicine. It’s a wonderful conversation and we learned so much and know you will too!Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcast

“We all love to talk about our jobs. That’s what My Veterinary Life is about, really, is talking about the stories of these different veterinarians.” Our guest today is Dr. Will Sander. Dr. Sander is an Assistant Professor for Preventative Medicine and Public Health as well as the Director of the DVM/MPH program at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine. His career has taken him to some incredible places and offered some unique experiences. We learn so much about what you can do with a DVM degree, a little patience and a great attitude. We are so excited to share this journey with you!Remember we want to hear from you! Please be sure to subscribe to our feed on Apple Podcasts and leave us a ratings and review. You can also contact us at MVLPodcast@avma.org You can also follow us on Social Media @AVMAVets #MyVetLife #MVLPodcast