Navigating a Career in Veterinary: A Guide to Cultivating Your Own Opportunities 🔭

Join us for an engaging and informative CE-credited webinar featuring three renowned speakers in the field of veterinary medicine. Doctors Phil Richmond, Charlotte French, and Melanie Barham will share their expertise on recruitment, retention, career progression and personal development.

Whether you are a student, recent graduate or seasoned professional, you will learn how to equip yourself with the right tools to thrive in any veterinary career you chose to carve out for yourself while also fostering an inclusive and supportive environment for your own teams and colleagues.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Tips on exploring an alternative career path in veterinary
• Owning your professional development and continued learning
• The importance of inclusive recruitment
• Where to find your community and support networks
• Managing stress levels by creating safe psychological spaces
• How to be a good mentor and why you need to send the elevator back down
• Key insights to building a robust and innovative team

Meet the speakers:

Dr Philip Richmond, DVM, CAPP, CPHSA, CPPC, CCFP (Florish Consulting)

Dr. Richmond is a practicing veterinarian and the Founder | Chief Consultant of Flourishing Phoenix Veterinary Consultants, LLC. He advocates for positive culture and individual, team, and organizational psychological health, safety, and wellbeing in veterinary workplaces.

Dr. Richmond leads and is involved in state, national, and international projects for advancing workplace wellbeing and culture in veterinary medicine. He has served as Chief Medical and Wellbeing Officer for Veteirnary United. He currently serves as the Florida Veterinary Medical Association’s Professional Wellbeing Committee Chair. He is also a member/advisor for several national committees and boards for workplace suicide prevention, psychological health & safety, and veterinary wellbeing, including those sponsored by the CDC/NIOSH, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Veterinary Hope Foundation, Veterinary Visionaries, MentorVet, and Appalachian State University.

Dr. Richmond is a speaker and published writer, a frequent veterinary podcast guest, and holds multiple certifications in applied positive psychology, appreciative inquiry, workplace wellbeing, psychological health & safety, trauma-informed workplaces, resilience training, behavior change, and suicide prevention. He was awarded the FVMA Gold Star for service in 2019, FVMA Veterinarian of the Year in 2021, and the Uncharted Veterinary Community Founder’s Award in 2023.

Dr Charlotte French MA VetMB BSc (ARCS) PGCVetEd FHEA MRCVS (Improve International)

Dr Charlotte studied veterinary medicine at Cambridge, following a first degree in Zoology. She has since spent more than 25 years working in both mixed and small animal practice and in shelter medicine. She has worked extensively in veterinary education, training veterinary nurses and developing curricula at diploma and degree levels. She has also worked with awarding bodies. In 2017 she completed a postgraduate certificate in Veterinary Education from the RVC and was awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. In 2020 she joined Improve International and is currently Head of Business Development for Improve Veterinary Education in the UK, Ireland and USA markets.

Dr Melanie Barham (VSGD)

Melanie is a veterinarian, entrepreneur, speaker, educator, and mum. Melanie loves working with teams and individuals to create change, find new ways to think through problems, and collaborate.

She holds a DVM from the Ontario Veterinary College, and MBA in Sustainable Commerce from the University of Guelph, and a Project Management Professional designation.

Melanie has held roles in many fields of vet med including sport horse medicine, consulting, laboratory, surveillance, not-for-profit/ NGO, and charity sectors. She is the CEO of Vets: Stay, Go, Diversify, the largest community dedicated to career development in vet med. She is also the acting CEO of Community Veterinary Outreach, a charity that provides pro bono veterinary and human health care to homeless people and pets. Melanie’s MBA research focused on veterinary career paths.

Outside of vet med, Melanie loves riding horses, hiking and cross country skiing, writing, and beekeeping.