Episode #69 – Dr. Molly McAllister

Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how people began their careers and how they got to where they are today?

Hi everyone. I’m Stacy Pursell, the founder and CEO of The VET Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm for the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter to specialize in the animal health industry and veterinary profession in the United States and built the first search firm to serve this unique niche. For the past 25 plus years, I have built relationships with the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers.

The People of Animal Health Podcast highlights incredible individuals I have connected with throughout my career. You will be able to learn more about their lives, careers, and contributions. With our wide range of expert guests, you’ll be sure to learn something new in every episode. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode.

Welcome to The People of Animal Health Podcast. Today we are joined by Dr. Molly McAllister, global chief medical officer at Mars Veterinary Health. With a career-spanning clinical practice, wildlife rehabilitation, veterinary research, and executive leadership, Dr. McAllister is a passionate advocate for proactive, accessible pet care and the well-being of veterinary professionals. She’s also the founder of the Diversify Veterinary Medicine Coalition and serves on the advisory board for Lewis and Clark College’s Center for Community and Global Health. Join us as we explore her journey, her vision for the future of veterinary medicine and what drives her commitment to impactful leadership.

Molly, welcome to The People of Animal Health Podcast.

Thank you so much, Stacy. I’m so honored to be here.

Well, I’m so happy to have you, Molly. I would love to start off at the beginning. What was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

I am a product of the Pacific Northwest. I grew up the daughter of a general surgeon, a human surgeon, and my mom was a nurse, but had an interesting childhood in that my father had grown up on a farm in the Midwest. And so about the time I was born, he, in addition to being a surgeon, purchased a working cattle ranch. And so I had this incredible benefit of growing up between the city where my dad worked full time and then spending every minute that we weren’t in the city on a ranch.

And I was the youngest of four by quite a bit. And so I’d say I mostly grew up as an only child. And in those transitions back and forth between the city and the farm, I really grew to find my best friendships with my animals, with our farm animals. And that certainly planted the seed for where I am today.

I didn’t know I wanted to be a veterinarian from the very beginning, but what I did know is I was passionate about taking care of our animals, about learning and teaching others about them and the role that they played with the people that they interacted with. And again, all of those things quite obviously come together to a career in veterinary medicine. So I am so grateful that my life took the path that it did.

Well, Molly, you started out your career in an equine internship focused on sports medicine and diagnostic imaging at an equine referral hospital. Then you practiced small animal medicine, and then you and I met when you were a veterinarian at the Audubon Society of Portland, working at a wildlife rehabilitation facility. Do you want to tell that story about how we met?

Oh, I would love to, Stacy. I’ll comment first and say that because I didn’t have this clear picture of being a veterinarian from a young age, I spent my years in high school and college exploring other opportunities. And so as I went through veterinary school, I was very interested in the breadth of opportunities that I saw. But I will say that in those four years, what I really saw was opportunities in clinical medicine.

So as you mentioned, I started out in equine medicine and then found that companion animal medicine was a better fit and then found my way to wildlife and enjoyed that. But again, I’m appreciative of the fact that I went in with my peripheral vision really open to see what was there because I reached a point in my career where I was ready to do something different. I felt like I wanted to, I enjoyed clinical work, but I wanted to do more than that. And a good friend of mine at the time said, “You know what? You should give a call to this woman named Stacy with The VET Recruiter and just see what opportunities might be available.”

It was such a formative and transformative time in my life that I so distinctly remember finding your website, sending you my resume over the weekend, and you giving me a call Monday morning. And we had a conversation about my background. And actually in that conversation was a great opportunity for self-reflection for me, Stacy, because I remember talking to you about what skills and experiences I had and what I thought I wanted to do with them. And what struck me, the light bulb moment that I had, that I continue to speak to people about today is how transferable our skills are as veterinarians. And that conversation with you was a pivotal moment for me.

You called me back, I think just a couple days later to say, “I think I have an opportunity you might be interested in.” And that turned out to be a job with Royal Canin, who was just starting to grow their business in the US at the time. And I, within about two or three weeks, had a job offer from them. And coincidentally, the woman who interviewed me, I just spoke with her yesterday, we still work together in completely different capacities. But it’s this wonderful small industry and the opportunities that exist are amazing. And you, Stacy, have been a really important person for so many of us in this profession that way.

Well, I love that. And I remember that story as if it were yesterday and it wasn’t yesterday. It’s been some years that have passed and here we are. And it’s been such a joy for me to be able to see your career flourish and where you are today as global chief medical officer at Mars. And I love what you said about just all the opportunities there are for veterinarians. Like I said, I met you when you were at the Audubon Society of Portland. You were working in a wildlife rehabilitation facility, and then you joined industry working as a veterinarian at Royal Canin. I’m curious what inspired some of your earlier career path before we met?

So I mentioned before that sort of breadth of perspective that I entered into veterinary school with. I, even in those days in school, was wondering what opportunities might exist, I’ll say along with clinical practice in addition to. I loved education as I mentioned. Although I didn’t have a name for it at the time, I did have a budding interest in public health, population health. And so I was intrigued as to how I could use my skills to create as big of an impact as possible.

I spoke to a mentor or I’ll say a mentor connected me with someone at the time who, again, the small size of our industry, 20 years later, just a couple of years ago, I reconnected with this person. His name is Steve Osofsky, he’s a veterinarian at Cornell now. And we were connected and I reached out to him saying I was interested in conservation medicine and how I might be involved in more of a one health perspective.

His advice to me was, “Whatever you want to do, there’s so many opportunities, but go practice, go get some clinical practice experience. Go spend a few years in clinical practice because you’ve spent this time and this money learning these skills. And it’ll be like riding a bike. If you never start, you won’t have those embedded skills, but if you spend a little time doing it, you’ll never forget.”

And that was some of the most valuable advice that I’ve ever been given. I continued to share that with young veterinarians or students today. And then, as I say, coincidentally, Steve and I reconnected 20 years later. We hadn’t talked in that whole time, and it’s been great to rekindle that relationship.

But so in starting with clinical practice, I went to a place I was familiar with. I’d ridden and competed horses throughout my life, and that’s where the equine internship was something that I knew I would enjoy. But then as I started to think about what the longevity of my career would be like, the sustainability of my career, I think like many, equine practice has some wonderful components and it has some challenges in terms of work-life integration and balance. And I found that maybe wasn’t going to be where I saw myself sustaining for a long duration.

So using my network, which that’s another pearl of wisdom that has stuck with me, is that we have such a powerful network within this profession, some friends encouraged me to just give something a try, another tack that I’ve taken throughout my career. And so I spent some time or I did a locum shift in a small animal practice and found that I really enjoyed learning that.

And this is where my transferable skills, I think I wasn’t using the term yet, I hadn’t talked to you yet, Stacy, for that epiphany. But this is where I realized that even though I hadn’t spent a lot of time in small animal medicine and I was most comfortable in equine that it took me a couple of weeks. But at the the end of the day, the skills I was using were the same skills, and I just had to step back and think about applying them to a slightly different environment. And so that was really empowering.

And then when I had the opportunity to take a job in wildlife rehab, it was sort of an extension of that same realization, dealing with 15 different species coming through the door each day and recognizing that I didn’t know exactly what to do every time, but I had skills that I could draw on. And so that was, again, really empowering from a clinical standpoint.

And then the last thing I’ll mention in that pre-industry career was that I did have the opportunity in rehab to work with a large group of volunteers. I was responsible for their support of the rehab facility. And that was a time when I learned that I did enjoy educating people. I enjoyed leading people. Leading volunteers is certainly a unique experience and different from people that you’re employing. But I found that I really enjoyed that people part of our profession as well, which I think was sort of the, I don’t want to say nail in the coffin. But it was the start of realizing that my career was going to be about more than just clinical medicine, and it was going to involve working with people closely.

Well, I think Steve gave such great advice to you to get some experience in a clinical setting. And that’s the advice I give to students that are in vet school that come to me that say, “I’m in veterinary school, but I’m thinking that I might want to go into industry. Do you think I could start out in industry?” And my recommendation to them also is get some clinical practice experience first, then you’ll be a better candidate for industry.

So Molly, when we first connected, since then, you’ve now held leadership roles across major veterinary organizations. What inspired your transition from hands-on veterinary care to leading strategy and innovation on a global scale?

It was definitely an incremental progression. I did not graduate from veterinary school with any idea that I would be doing what I’m doing today. In fact, I would’ve put most of the money that I didn’t have on the table to tell you that this wouldn’t have been the direction that I would go. But that’s what’s so wonderful about this profession is that there can be so many opportunities when you use your network, when you think about your transferable skills and when you look around at what doors might be ready for you to open them. And that’s really what has happened for me.

I cannot say it was a planned journey because for me, each step along the way has been a little bit of a leap of faith, a little bit of a risk, and a curiosity for what might be possible. That led me to roles in, I spent some time actually in HR doing learning and development. I spent time leading a research team. But along the way, I was able to gather up the things that I felt were my strengths and my passions, the things that I felt would add more impact. And that’s really what’s driven my choices along the way.

And when I realized that I could have such a broader impact by leading through other people, that I could only touch 15 or 20 pets a day. But today, I get to touch millions and millions of every year through a large group, a large chain of people, but I get to impact on a global scale. And so it went from my own practice to the doctors that I could teach and speak with when I was working at Royal Canin to the doctors that I supported at Banfield, the thousands of doctors. And again, today, I have this honor of being able to be a support for over 12,000 veterinarians within the Mars Veterinary Health family.

Well, as global chief medical officer at Mars Veterinary Health, what are the biggest challenges you face in ensuring consistent high quality care across about 3,000 clinics worldwide?

Yeah, I mean, just in asking that question, I think it points to the challenge, which is how can you ensure anything happens across such a large scale? But what I really love about my job is that it allows me to step back and think about systems and environment and culture, which I think are the critical integral parts to bringing not just quality of care for patients, but quality of care for the people.

And so how do I do it? It’s a lot of listening. It’s a lot of listening at scale. What are our associates and veterinary teams saying is working and what are they saying that isn’t working that they would like to see differently? How do I listen to the leaders about what enables them to do their job well and what gets in the way? And then I really view my job as somebody who sits here thinking about how to remove barriers and what I can put in place that will support and enable the delivery of that consistent high quality care and consistent high quality leadership at scale.

It’s challenging. I work across many different cultures. I work across different business types from preventive medicine to specialty ER, to hospice care. But at the end of the day, what I love about this profession is that we are more alike than we are different and there is a lot of commonality. And so I don’t get to go into every hospital and support them directly, but I do get to step back and think about what can I do today? It’s really from a population health standpoint, what can I do today that’s going to improve life and care delivery in those practice just a little bit? But that little bit across the globe, across 3,000 hospitals brings me a tremendous amount of fulfillment and I think really makes a difference in the care that we’re able to provide for our patients.

Molly, you often speak about the importance of healthy vets, healthy pets, healthy communities. How do you approach supporting veterinary professionals’ mental health and wellbeing in such a demanding field?

It’s a great question. So when I think about health and wellbeing, I think about three concentric circles. I think the first is the self and self-knowledge, self-reflection, and how we support our own health and wellbeing. For me, that is about, number one, ensuring that people have the time, the space, the knowledge and resources to take care of themselves. And it’s also about encouraging through role modeling.

I can talk about it in a little more depth, but I’ll say the next circle for me is about culture and it’s about the culture in a veterinary practice and how we can support a culture of psychological safety, a culture of belonging, so that someone can feel that they can be their best self, their true self when they go into work every day. And then to me, the third level is the environment, the leadership and the systems that we put around people to support them.

To go back to that inside piece, I firmly believe and have learned throughout my career, that if we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t take care of the people that need us, whether that’s our clients and our patients, whether that’s our team members, our children, and our family. We’ve really got to take care of ourselves to be the best self for them. And so it’s important to me to role model that. And it’s also important to me to speak about that within our business setting to make sure that that is a common refrain that people hear, to take care of yourself and make sure to prioritize that.

From a cultural standpoint, culture is about how each and every one of us contribute to the environment around us. And so to me, that’s really about how we can create both an open dialogue between individual people and the team that they’re on, or the leader that they report to or that they work with to say, “What do we need to feel safe? What do we need to feel like we belong and what do we need to work best together?” And bringing that individual mindset to the mindset of an entire team and helping people feel empowered that each and every one of us is actually a leader. Whether you think it or know it or not, the way that you show up in the environment you work in contributes to the culture. So you can choose the culture that you want to work in and you can contribute to that bit by bit each day.

And then finally, on that larger scale of leadership and systems and environment, there are a lot of things that we can put in place that are tools and resources that support people. So for me, within my job today, it’s about how I work with my colleagues and we advocate for the benefits that we can provide our associates, making sure that mental health resources are accessible to them. Both from the standpoint of medical providers as well as how do you get access to an app that might help you with meditation? Or how do we ensure that people are able to take care of their financial health or their family health, which we know contributes to mental health state as well?

So it’s certainly complex and it’s full of all sorts of components, but it is such an important part to focus on because when I say healthy pets, healthy vets, healthy communities, the vets are at the center of that. And by vet I mean veterinary team. If we don’t take care of our team, we cannot take care of our patients. But when we take care of our team and take care of our patients, we’re taking care of the community that we work in as well. And that is truly making a positive impact on the world around us.

Well, going back to your comment about leadership, you can lead without having the word leadership in your title. What advice would you give to somebody that doesn’t have leadership in their title on how they can be a leader?

I think two things. One is just looking around and raising your hand and finding those opportunities where you can create a positive change around you or you can support your team. Before I became a leader, for me that looked like in, for example, the companion animal hospital I worked in, we wanted to get AAHA certified. So raising my hand to say I really wanted to work with our practice manager to make sure that we were able to do that. When I worked at the wildlife rehab center, it was wanting to have a communication campaign that could educate our community about certain things that were going on with the wildlife.

And so it wasn’t about somebody asking me to do it or telling me it was my responsibility, but it was seeing a need and stepping into it. And I think that not only gave me opportunities to lead, but it taught me a lot about leadership skills and how do you motivate people? How do you create successful awareness and bring people along with you?

And I think a second part of those who might want to see themselves as leaders in the future is I’ll go back to that self-reflection and thinking about what is it that makes you your very best self? And then think about how can you listen to others and support them in being their best selves? Because working in a culture where servant leadership is really the top priority, leadership is about helping the others around you rise up, helping deliver a better output because everybody’s able to show up as their best self. And so that’s about knowing yourself and then listening so that you can learn about others.

That’s really good. I like what you said about raise your hand and in step into it. Step into it, that sounds like a book title that needs to be written.

I love that.

Molly, what impact has the Diversify Veterinary Medicine Coalition had since its founding, and why is diversity such a critical issue in the veterinary profession today?

Stacy, thank you for asking this question because this is a topic that I’m really passionate about. The Diversify Veterinary Medicine Coalition was founded in 2020. And it was a group of dedicated industry leaders who wanted to finally see change as it relates to representation in our profession and wanted to leverage their unique capabilities. And so since 2020, I’m really proud to say that the Diversify Veterinary Medicine Coalition, or the DVMC, by the end of this year, will have funded a total of 29 scholars. These are students who begin the scholarship program in their final years of undergraduate, and they’re given a full six years of significant scholarship funding. So starting in undergrad and getting them through veterinary school.

So by the end of this year, as we get through this fall scholarship awards, we’ll have 29 scholars. Of those 29 students, and this is just from five years of scholarships, not even quite five years of scholarships. Nine of those students, they all started as juniors or seniors in undergraduate. Nine of those students are in veterinary school today, six of them are applying this fall, and a hundred percent of the scholars were accepted on their first application to veterinary school, which is fantastic.

And I attribute that to the fact that this isn’t just about offering a financial reward to these students. The DVMC has actually created an entire wraparound program to provide them with support on how to apply to veterinary school, how to do an interview, how to think about managing your finances. Recognizing that success and sustainability in this career is about more than just having money, of course, it’s about that social-emotional support that you need around you.

And then the last couple of things I’ll mention is that the DVMC has awarded 42 grants to veterinary students and early career veterinarians to attend major conferences. So AVMA, VMX, and WVC have all partnered with us as well as the ACVS actually. So we’ve got some specialty residents attending the ACVS conference. And then finally, again, talking about wraparound support, of our student scholars, 95% of them had paid summer employment in the industry this past summer because of the network within the DVMC.

So this is a small number, but as of this fall, one out of every 269 applicants to veterinary school from underrepresented backgrounds was funded by the DVMC. Now, one out of 269 may seem like a small fraction, but this is a new group. This is hard work ahead of us and determined to make a measurable quantifiable change for our profession.

And you asked about why it’s so important. If you go out and talk to veterinarians from underrepresented communities of all types, one of the most common things I hear people say is, “I never saw a veterinarian who looked like me. I never thought I could become a veterinarian or be in this industry because I never met anyone from my community or anyone who looked like me.”

When we look at the demographics of pet ownership in the United States, we see that it is diversifying tremendously as the demographics of our country diversify. And that ability to find care from someone who culturally and physically and from a community-based standpoint is similar to you is truly impactful to patient outcomes. And we know from human healthcare that this makes a difference in how patients are treated when their doctor comes from a community similar to theirs. And so we have reason to believe this to be true in veterinary medicine as well.

And a last thing I’ll say is we all know the human-animal bond is such a wonderful gift, and the ability to care-take for the human-animal bond is an incredible opportunity. And when I look across this country and I see so many animal-loving children, I feel like they should all have this right to find a place in the profession if this is what feels right for them, if that’s how they want to support and promote the human-animal bond. And so it is really important and only going to become more important as pets become more and more important in our society and in our communities.

Well, I love that. And what an incredible thing that the Diversify Veterinary Medicine Coalition is doing, and I would love to follow some of their careers with these students.

Absolutely. It’s really exciting.

So Molly, with your extensive background in research, including leading Banfield State of Pet Health Reports, how do you see data transforming the future of veterinary care?

I would say people are the most important to the future of veterinary care, but data transformation is the foundation of the future of veterinary care. We have such an opportunity to think about how we can provide better outcomes for patients, how we can provide it in a more cost-effective or value-based way, how we can remove more of the emotional burden on our veterinary teams by having to navigate and have crucial conversations with clients about what’s possible or what they should do. Data holds a lot of value for us.

And I think what I see as an opportunity is that as we use data to drive better care or more efficient and effective care, as we use it to develop new treatments, we also have this opportunity to open up the time, the bandwidth of our veterinary professionals to spend more time with clients. And when I see the changing role of pets in society and I see the changing relationships that people have with their pets, I think it goes without saying that creating that trust and partnership with the client is becoming more and more important to a sense of a supportive environment and the best outcome for the pet.

And so the more we can lean into data and using it to help us deliver better, more effective care, the more we can free up our people to do what people do best, which is to make that connection, to build that trust, and then be able to support the delivery of those outcomes as you go forward.

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Well, veterinary burnout is a growing concern. How can clinic leaders and organizations in our profession redesign work environments to better support longevity and fulfillment in the veterinary profession?

It is such a great question, and it’s probably a million-dollar question because I know a lot of people are working on it. And I won’t profess to say that I have the answer, but what I will say is in speaking to current veterinary professionals and talking to those students who are our veterinary professionals of the future, there’s some consistent themes. One of those is around culture. It’s around psychological safety. And it’s around people feeling that they can raise their hand when they see something that should be done differently, that they can be in a place where mistakes are accepted.

And I think that we are making good strides, but we need to move from any sort of hierarchy within our profession of someone having the right answer or someone being the sage who has all the knowledge to a place of really team-based care where we value the contributions of every member of the team, be it the receptionist to the veterinary assistant, to the technician, to the doctor, and that they all feel that they are valued in that team.

I think that team-based care is also important in terms of taking the weight off the shoulders of any individual. I know from my own clinical experience, being the only doctor in a practice where your technicians or your assistants didn’t feel empowered to deliver care is incredibly burdensome on everybody. And so again, when we can create that sense of teamwork and that we’re all here to have a successful, productive day, that helps everyone’s job be more sustainable.

But it is about more than just the people, I think we have to look at how we support people from a management standpoint. People don’t leave jobs, they leave leaders. So how do we continue to lean into, there’s some great work going on and we need to do more work to educate veterinary professionals on how to be a good leader. You don’t get that in technician school. You don’t get that in veterinary school. So how can we provide those opportunities for the people who want to see themselves or who have a rising career as a leader?

Flexibility is really important, and I think flexibility isn’t just about having a flexible schedule during the week. I think flexibility is both within a point of time as well as beyond a certain point of time. How can we create opportunities so that people can have a dynamic career where in one week they might spend a couple of days delivering preventive care and one day delivering emergency care, or perhaps they want to go be an educator and teach? How do we create opportunities where people can leverage the diversity of this field to bring that fulfillment to themselves in the day-to-day, but also to think about the sustainability of their career?

It’s okay to not do the same thing. You would probably know better than me, Stacy, but the average person does not stay in the same job for 30 years anymore. And so how do we provide encouragement and opportunity for those career transitions? You do a great job of opening that door to so many veterinary professionals to seeing what else is possible. And we need to make people more aware that when you have a veterinary background and that expertise, you have so many transferable skills, going there again. So you can do something for two or three years and then try something different. And there are so many doors open to you.

And then the last thing I’ll say is just we really do have to think about how we can better support the client and the veterinary team interface, whether we want to call it spectrum of care or access to care? Because that is a real moral dilemma for so many professionals that impacts their sustainability is how can we make care affordable and accessible to the patients who need it? And so whether that’s looking at new payment options, whether that’s looking at better use or ongoing use of spectrum of care delivery, I think we’ve got a lot to learn and a lot to develop in that space so that we can help get pets some degree of care that’s appropriate for their situation versus all or none.

That’s all good stuff that you said there. And we talked earlier about your early work in wildlife rehabilitation and equine medicine. How have those early career experiences shaped your perspective as a veterinary leader today?

Those are two very different types of practice, and I think a couple key things. Personally, those early years and those transitions helped me start to see the breadth of opportunity in the profession, as I’ve spoken about several times, again, helped me see transferability of skills. But it also helped me see the variety of ways that the human-animal bond plays out for people. Whether it is in a situation of a working horse, working ranch where the horse is really part of actually the finances, the economics for that person’s life. Or whether we’re talking about a simple crow, a baby crow that fell out of a tree into somebody’s yard, and the connection or the emotion that they feel with that animal that they just have this momentary interaction with.

It made me realize that in all of those interactions, the role that we play as veterinary professionals to educate and to support in finding solutions is really critical to people and their sense of good in the world, their sense of well-being. And that goes on into how we support the human-animal bond through industry and pharmaceuticals and nutrition, how we support it through tertiary care, how we support it through animal shelters and work we do there. It is all so important and so impactful in its own right.

As someone who advocates for proactive and accessible pet healthcare, what innovations or models of care do you believe will define the next decade of veterinary medicine?

So I want to go back to your question on data, and I do think that there’s going to be, there is right now, innovation that’s allowing us to be more effective and efficient in our clinical decision-making. And that is so important when we know that there is a lot of unknown in this profession. And the more that we can hone in on the most appropriate, the right diagnostic tests, the most appropriate treatment, and the more we can take the guesswork out of what we do from a clinical standpoint, the more we can look at what it costs to deliver care and how we can do it in a more cost-effective way.

I think I’ll go back to the idea of team-based care and recognizing that a veterinarian’s time is worth a lot and we do need to charge for that. And a technician’s time is worth a lot as well, we need to charge for that. But when we use the whole team, we have more opportunities, more diversity in how we can support that pet and that client’s needs so that we can work within their financial constraints as it relates to access to care.

I think there’s certainly some interesting work continuing to go on in the space of virtual care. We haven’t really figured that out yet, but I do think virtual care is going to continue to be an important part of how we deliver care, particularly as our profession becomes more digitally oriented. And it isn’t just about having a video call, but it’s about connecting with clients and by extension their pets on those days that they aren’t in the four walls of our hospitals so that we can be promoting their health from afar rather than just waiting until they come in to see us.

And then certainly there’s a huge opportunity in the R&D space, and I love to see so much of the work that’s going on around early diagnosis, detection and diagnosis, and more specific treatments. Specifically if I think about some of the conversations I’ve had recently in the oncology space, it’s really exciting how we’re getting to a place of having more targeted treatments and being able to do those in a way that is more cost-effective for the client in terms of supporting their pet.

Well, you’re deeply involved in developing future veterinary leaders. What qualities or skills do you believe emerging professionals must cultivate to thrive in today’s profession?

I think that, well, I’ll say I don’t know that this needs to be cultivated. I think it exists in many veterinary professionals. But I think curiosity and lifelong learning is crucially important in our field where things are changing so quickly. So that ability to feel comfortable saying you don’t know everything or that you need to go learn more is really important. So I guess that’s a bit of humility associated with the curiosity and the love of learning.

I know that we are in a time in the world where agility is really important and that ability to not get too attached to a particular solution, to not get too attached to a particular way of doing things and being able to be open-minded to change is more and more important as we navigate this rapid pace of change and transformation in the world around us.

And then I think finally, I would say, well, there is more to it, but I’d say from a priority standpoint, I’m going to say resilience. But I want to qualify that word a little bit because resilience, not just in the sense of being able to get back up after something challenging has happened, but really resilience in a very proactive way. So the skill of supporting your own health and well-being, the self-reflection to say, what do you need to be your best self? And then really being proactive and seeking that out, feeling empowered to ask for that so that you can be your best self in a world that’s ever-changing. We’re not always good at putting ourselves first as veterinary professionals. And so I think that’s something we have to really challenge ourselves to think about.

I think resiliency is one of the most important skills to have a sustainable career.

Absolutely.

Well, Molly, balancing leadership, family life, and personal passions like hiking and travel is no small feat. What practices or mindsets help you stay grounded and inspired?

For me, I think what I’ve realized over the year is to recognize that it doesn’t have to be a wholesale change or a wholesale declaration of your life. Sometimes it’s about just taking a few minutes to reset yourself, to recharge yourself, to refocus on what’s important to you. So in my life with a lot of travel, with young children and pets, and a big job, there is a degree of day-to-day routine. For me, carving out that time for myself first thing in the morning to work out, to have some time by myself is absolutely critical to starting my day off right.

But then I’ll say, by the time 9:00 AM hits, all plans have dissolved and it is now an agile day where I’m going to adjust to what comes my way. But to navigate that, I’ve learned that, I’ll go back to again, I might just take two minutes to step outside and walk a quick circle around the building. I might just sit on a plane and close my eyes for a few minutes and listen to calming music and recharging myself in those micro doses.

And I’d say similarly, connection with people around me is really important, and I’ve had to realize that connection can’t always be an hour-long conversation or going out for coffee. Connection sometimes just has to be a really authentic five-minute conversation. But it’s amazing when you start trying that out. It’s amazing how much good you can do in a short period of time. So I think just that you don’t have to set your goals too high, just start somewhere. And that builds into a really supportive environment or supportive skillset, I’ll say, to sustainability.

That’s really good. What has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the veterinary profession?

I think what’s been surprising and continues to be surprising to me is actually about how many opportunities there are. And I know I’ve said the word opportunity many, many times, but I mean really, truly, every year that goes by, I see veterinary professionals leveraging their skills in unique ways that inspire me and astound me. And so I think that it is surprising to see that. It’s surprising to see that we limit ourselves sometimes or that the community, society can limit us to just wearing a white coat and being a clinical veterinarian because there is so much that we can do.

And again, when I look to those young generations of animal-loving students, STEM-loving students who might have a career in veterinary medicine, it just gives me this really strong desire to engage with them and to talk about the possibility because veterinary medicine of today looks very different than veterinary medicine of 30 years ago. And the veterinary medicine of 10 years from now is going to look dramatically different than it looks today. So I think that excitement, that opportunity, and really the curiosity to see what you might do is something that’s really exciting. And I didn’t expect that when I started in this career.

Yeah, I love that. And there’s also opportunities that exist outside of the veterinary profession for veterinarians that some people don’t realize. At one point in time, the former head of regulatory affairs for Coca-Cola was a veterinarian. He’s since retired. And then at one point, somebody at the top of quality assurance for Campbell’s Soup was a veterinarian.

That’s amazing. And using these great skills and this great education to drive change, drive impact even beyond what we think of as the veterinary space, that’s great.

So true. Molly, how have you seen the veterinary profession change throughout the years?

Gosh, so many ways, Stacy. I think the face of veterinary medicine has changed dramatically. It’s been 20 years since I graduated from school. The face of veterinary medicine has changed. The interactions with pet owners or I’ll say animal owners in general have changed tremendously. And I see the economics of the profession changing as well. I think that we have so many factors coming together today, many of which are challenges ahead of us, but they all lend themselves to such an opportunity or an ongoing opportunity for the profession to transform. And I think those of us here today are sitting in such a wonderful place to influence that transformation.

So I’ve seen, as I say, the face change, I’ve seen the practice change, the economics change. And we are heading into a time where we really can hold on to what we love most about the veterinary profession, and we can truly influence change in those pain points that we’ve experienced over time, again, whether it’s cost of care, whether it’s providing the most effective care. And so lots of change, lots more change to come. And with that change comes an opportunity to really create a thriving profession in which we’re able to give pets and clients the very best care possible.

What does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

The crystal ball says it’s going to look different as I just said, but we are only going to become more and more important in society when you see how the human-animal bond and the connection that comes with it is more and more important when we have a society where social isolation is still a challenge, where technology has a lot of advantages, but it has disadvantages as far as how people feel connected with their communities. We play such an important role in fostering, promoting, and protecting that bond.

And I mentioned earlier that I believe data is going to help us take away some of the work or inefficiencies in the workflow of care delivery. Not to say that that just means we’re going to see more pets. It means that we’re going to have more intentional, more valuable communication and partnership with pet owners because they’re going to demand that from us as well.

And so we’re going to become I think even more, or maybe we’ll go back to becoming that really people-focused profession and enabled by tremendous amounts of data that will allow us to give that quality of life to pets and the families they belong to that they really want and deserve to have.

Molly, what’s been the biggest adversity or challenge that you’ve encountered through your career?

I think for me, one of the things that has driven me through my career is certainly a passion for what we do or a passion for the potential of what we can do in this profession. And that has been a challenge for me because it is really hard for me to do anything related to veterinary medicine not at 150% or 200%. And over the years, that has led to challenges of fatigue and burnout, borderline burnout, if not full burnout. And I’ve had to learn how to meter that passion to some degree. And it goes back to the idea of how do I find the time and space in the day to relax or to step back or to regroup?

But it’s a wonderful strength to have, and as so many things are, it has two sides to the coin. And so we’ve got to learn how to, again, take care of ourselves so that we can be sustainable in using our gifts in this profession. And that’s going to be what’s going to make it sustainable for each of us as an individual over the course of our career. But also, it has the opportunity to be a mindset and a cultural change that helps the entirety of the profession sustain.

Well, those are things I love about you, Molly, are your passion and your energy.

Well, thank you.

What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

It would go back to take care of yourself so you can take care of others. I would love to redo all the years that I spent overworked or stressed and stretched too thin because I felt like I had to take care of everyone else first. And it is an amazing thing when you realize that when you take care of yourself, everything else becomes easier. And so yes, I wish I had known that.

What message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone listening today?

It’s twofold. It would be about empowerment and mutuality. And the empowerment component is, it goes back to being a leader. It goes back to the role you play in the culture that you exist in. It’s not waiting for somebody to tell you that it’s okay for you to do something, but it’s seeing a need and stepping into it and feeling confident in that and holding that as a core value. The world, there are so many opportunities for us every day to have a positive impact around us. And it sometimes just takes looking up and thinking, “What could I do right here to make this situation a little bit better?” And then just doing it. Maybe it’s a little bit, don’t wait for the invitation, step in.

And then the mutuality piece is around recognizing that you are going to have a better output in what you do if you’re thinking about the variety of stakeholders or the other people who will be influenced and find a solution that’s going to create the most value for everyone involved. When I think about some of the boardroom conversations I’m in, or even if I’m in a clinic talking to them about some of the challenges, it’s never about having one right answer, who’s the person with the right answer. It’s about finding that right answer together and co-creating something that works for everyone. And that sense of mutuality really helps us create solutions that everyone can buy into, that everyone can promote going forward that again, are more sustainable because you’ve got a diversity of people aiming to bring that to life.

Such good advice. Don’t wait to be told, step in and do take those opportunities. Well, Molly, some of our guests said they’ve had a key book that they’ve read that helped them. Do you have a key book in your life that’s impacted you the most?

I do, and I have to go back to probably a fairly tried and true one, but Brene Brown’s book, Dare to Lead was so impactful. And it is one that I continue to go back and reference because it has so much power in terms of both how to show up as a leader, but also thinking about going back to the personal reflection and how to be vulnerable and recognize that that’s not a weakness, how to lead in a way that lets other people be vulnerable, be their best selves. And so I highly recommend that book if you haven’t read it.

Well, Molly, you’ve got the mic. What is one thing that you want to share with our listeners of The People of Animal Health Podcast before you drop the mic today?

I’m going to go back to my days in wildlife rehab, Stacy, and a mentor that I had, the veterinarian who really helped me gain the experience I needed to be successful there has unfortunately passed away far too young, Deb Sheaffer. And she gave me advice when I started in wildlife medicine. It’s often a very challenging space where the endings aren’t always happy. They often are unhappy because the best thing that you can do for an animal is to oftentimes put it out of its misery to support in that way. And I would get frustrated that we couldn’t necessarily figure out what was going on, or we couldn’t solve the problem or the root cause was outside of our realm of control.

And she sat me down one day and she said, “Molly, we can do so much good in this profession and so much good in this space. And we just have to remember that just because we can’t do everything, just because we can’t solve the whole problem, doesn’t mean we can’t do something.” And I’ve held that close at heart ever since because it applies to so many situations.

And as I look at the world around us and the ever complex challenges that present themselves, just because we can’t completely solve them, just because we can’t tackle the whole thing, doesn’t mean we can’t just start and take a baby step and make a little bit of improvement. We can comfort a pet, we can help a client feel that they can share fully. We can help a teammate develop a new skill. We can do a little bit. Incremental change really does make a difference over time.

I love that. Well, Molly, it’s been such an honor for me to have you here as my guest today on The People of Animal Health Podcast. It’s been such an honor for me to be a part of your career, especially in the early days, and just watch the progression and how your career has evolved. You’re making an incredible impact, and I thank you for the time you took to be here with me today.

Absolutely, Stacy. Thank you so much for the invitation. And again, thank you for all that you’re doing for the people of animal health. You really are a phenomenal strength and asset for our profession.

Thank you, Molly.

Okay, take care.