Lately there’s a lot of Karens in my professional life. To be clear, one Karyn, two Karens, and one Carin. Keeping up with them is inspiring. When I write their full names you will know immediately why.
The first Karyn is Karyn Gavzer, now a practice management consultant who has worked with industry, associations and veterinary practices for 20 years. I think of Karyn every February during Pet Dental Health Month as she was partner extraordinaire and director of marketing for the American Veterinary Medical Association as we created “Pets Need Dental, Care Too!” with the American Veterinary Dental Society and Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Inc. We worked together on the strategic planning of the Catalyst Summit which led to the formation of the Catalyst Council. We will soon be working together yet again. Karyn has her MBA and is one of fewer than 400 certified veterinary hospital managers (CVPM) in North America.
The next Karen is easy. As I wrote in my last blog post, Dr. Karen Bradley is a woman who has taken action within the veterinary profession in six short months and a featured guest column interviewee. Dr. Bradley is the newly installed President of the Women’s Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative (WVLDI).
The other Karen is Dr. Karen Padgett, Chief Operations Officer of Ceva Animal Health, who I’ve also been honored to know while she was at Hill’s and now again at Ceva. I haven’t written about Dr. Padgett a lot. Like Karen Bradley, it’s never about her, it’s never about being a woman, it’s about the work at hand. But this is my blog and she is a woman, she is a veterinarian, and she is valued by both industry and the veterinary profession. She’s just got the right mix going on. And like the women profiled in my last post, she’s surely not done yet. Facebook COO’s Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In examines why women’s progress in leadership roles has not moved forward. This Karen not only has, she’s representing Ceva as the first industry sponsor of WVLDI.
And finally there’s Carin. Carin Giovanni is the dynamo Western Veterinary Conference Marketing Director who has accommodated every request I’ve made to help plan to cover the conference, get the word out about the WVLDI event, and more. This is my 19th Western Veterinary Conference and thanks to the conference leadership including Manolita Moore, the Chief Operating Officer, I have always felt especially welcome. I haven’t met Carin personally yet, but when I do, I will not only thank her, but sing her praises all around. Keeping up with the Karens? You bet they’re awe-inspiring. And a few more examples of women leaders in the veterinary profession.