Healthy Practice Champion: An individual or team focused on creating healthier veterinary workplaces by advancing culture, wellbeing, leadership, and professional development to help veterinary teams grow, thrive, and better serve their patients and communities.
Industry Influencer: An individual who uses their medium of choice: social media, articles, public speaking, or media appearances to shine light on the profession, medical advancements within vet med.
Practice Game Changer: An individual or team focussed on making the practice better by addressing the challenges faced daily by developing new workflows, strategies and approaches to ultimately advance veterinary medicine.
M3 Counseling
Heartstorming Wellness
Dr. Sonja A. Olson (C-MMT, C-Neuroinformed Coach, MentorVet Certified Veterinary Mentor) is a credentialed veterinary wellness coach, educator, author, and emergency veterinarian with nearly 30 years of experience in small animal and exotic emergency medicine. A graduate of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, she practiced in private and corporate settings in Virginia and Florida, where years of teaching, mentoring, and leading teams revealed the profession’s far-reaching need for well-being support and healthy coping strategies.
In 2022, Dr. Olson founded Heartstorming Wellness LLC, based in Vancouver, Washington, to help veterinary individuals, teams, and leaders navigate personal and professional stress with more skill, optimize their holistic health, and build healthy practice cultures. Combining evidence-based neuroplasticity coaching, mindfulness, and her clinical expertise, she creates compassionate, transformative spaces through individual and team coaching, keynote presentations, webinars, retreats, and podcasts. As a certified mindfulness meditation teacher, neuroinformed and trauma-informed coach, and Mental Health First Aid instructor, she equips veterinary professionals with practical tools to manage change, deepen self-awareness, and foster calmer, kinder, more resilient teams.
Dr. Olson is the author of Creating Well-being and Building Resilience in the Veterinary Profession: A Call to Life (Routledge, 2022) and Your Veterinary Wellness Journey: An Interactive Guide to Thriving with Growth, Resilience, and Purpose (published October 2026), and a contributing author to numerous veterinary textbooks and journal articles. Her mission is to harness the innate human potential for healing and growth, guiding veterinary professionals and practices globally toward healthier, more sustainable ways of working and living.
Flourish.vet
His own experience of burnout as a veterinary hospital owner inspired him to explore what it means to lead a healthy veterinary workplace and start Flourish Veterinary Consulting in 2018. Today, Josh and the Flourish team help leaders turn their good intentions into healthy workplaces, for their teams and themselves.
His approach pairs scientific evidence with compassion, humor, and a deep respect for the realities of veterinary work. Rather than simply asking exhausted professionals to become more resilient, he helps organizations improve the conditions in which their people work. That means building cultures where people feel safe, valued, and heard and recognizing that team wellbeing, patient care, and practice success are deeply connected.
Josh brings nearly 30 years of veterinary experience, a master’s in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology, and graduate education in positive communication and conflict management to this work. He has also coauthored peer-reviewed research linking positive veterinary leadership with employee engagement and intentions to stay.
As the author of Lead to Thrive: The Science of Crafting a Positive Veterinary Culture, a Flourish Academy educator, and cohost of The Veterinary Culture Lab podcast, Josh translates research into practical tools veterinary professionals can use on their next shift. Through consulting, coaching, and immersive learning programs, he and his team help people turn those tools into everyday habits.
His work invites the profession to ask a hopeful question: How do we build veterinary workplaces where people can flourish? He believes that together, we can create the energizing profession we all deserve.
Outside work, Josh is a soccer-playing, cookie-eating Coloradan who shares life with his wife, Greta, and their many much-loved furry, feathered, and scaled creatures.
Animal Policy Group
@criticalcareveterinarian
Dr. Mariana Pardo is a trailblazing force in the world of veterinary medicine, exemplifying the transformative power of dedication and education. In 2009, she embarked on her journey at Universidad Mayor, Chile, where she laid the foundation for her remarkable career.Her pursuit of excellence led her to the University of Georgia and the University of Florida, where she honed her skills through not one, but two emergency and critical care internships. Driven by an insatiable hunger for knowledge, she then pursued her emergency and critical care residency at Cornell University.
Dr. Pardo is more than just a skilled practitioner; she is a bilingual ambassador for knowledge and change. As an international speaker, she bridges the gap between cultures, sharing her expertise far and wide. Her prolific contributions extend beyond the lecture hall; she has authored multiple articles and book chapters, leaving an indelible mark on the field. In a digital age, Dr. Pardo has leveraged the power of social media through her platform @criticalcareveterinarian, bringing accessible continuing education to a global audience. Her dedication to teaching is not just a profession; it’s a calling. She is on a mission to give back to the Latin American community, generously participating in numerous continuing education programs.
However, Dr. Pardo’s influence extends beyond her professional achievements. She is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in veterinary medicine, and her commitment is evident in her role as a member of the American College of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. In 2024, Dr. Pardo’s life journey led to the inspiration to create Global Instruction for Veterinary Empowerment or GIVE, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that has the mission of creating global veterinary advancement by empowering sustainable specialty-level care in areas where these services are not available or cost-prohibitive.
Dr. Pardo’s journey is an inspiring testament to the heights one can reach through unwavering dedication, education, and a deep commitment to making veterinary medicine more inclusive and accessible for all. @criticalcareveterinarian – 50.4k followers on Insta;
Dairy Doc
Dr. Michelle Schack is a practicing dairy cattle veterinarian and educational content creator known online as “Dairy Doc.” She uses social media to bring audiences behind the scenes of veterinary medicine, sharing the science, challenges, advancements, and everyday work of caring for dairy cattle.
Her educational content receives more than 8 million views each month and reaches more than 500,000 followers across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Through approachable explanations of animal health, welfare, and food production, she engages veterinarians, veterinary students, farmers, and the public while highlighting the important role veterinarians play in animal agriculture and the food system.
Dr. Schack is also a national speaker on veterinary communication, animal welfare, and education. She chairs the American Association of Bovine Practitioners Animal Welfare Committee, serves on the Arizona Veterinary Medical Association Board of Directors representing large animal medicine, and mentors veterinary students.
Her educational work extends beyond social media. She co-founded DairyKind, an employee education platform focused on animal care and well-being, and authored DairyDoc’s Discovery Goggles: Milk from Cow to Carton, bringing veterinary and agricultural education to young audiences.
Across each platform, her goal is simple: help more people see, understand, and connect with dairy veterinary medicine.
Beyond the Crown
Mary is a Charter member of the Academy of Veterinary Dental Technicians, received her Veterinary Technician Specialty in Dentistry in June 2006, and was recertified in 2025. Mary worked in research for over 13 years, specializing in products that improve companion animals’ oral health, and continues to work with companies to evaluate product efficacy. In addition to her research background, she was the practice manager and dental technician specialist at a general practice for seven years. She is an adjunct at two distance veterinary technology programs and currently serves as president of Beyond the Crown Veterinary Education; she has over 16 years of experience teaching dentistry to veterinary teams using practical, easy-to-master methods. Mary is actively involved in NAVTA, AVDT, AVMA, AAVSB, F4VD, VetPartners, CVTE, and KSVTA. Mary was named the NAVTA Veterinary Technician of the Year by NAVTA in2020 and received the AVDT’s Excellence in Dentistry Education in 2019. In addition, Mary is a speaker and wet lab instructor at numerous state and national conferences; she has published multiple articles in professional publications and journals, written several textbook chapters, and published her Companion Animal Dentistry for Veterinary Technicians textbook in 2020. In 2024, Mary was named the VMX Technician of the Year. She continues to advocate for title protection and the proper use of credentials for veterinary technicians in practices. Mary lives on a small farm near Lawrence, Kansas, with her husband, Doug, a terrier named Gypsy, and two cats, Debbie and Dash. She has two sons and five grandchildren.
Empowering Veterinary Teams® (EVT) is a woman-founded and owned veterinary training organization built on a simple idea: meet people where they are and give them what they need. EVT gives practices the workflows and people-development tools that lead to better patient care, and it starts with the leaders who already exist on every team. Instead of generic continuing education, EVT built a structured, tiered system (Excel, Verify, and Transcend) so each practice can choose the right level of support for its current needs. Options range from foundational training workshops to full-scale operational transformation.
EVT’s approach is a genuine game changer because it treats team development as a question of workflow and culture, not just a training checklist. Every engagement is customized. Train-the-Trainer workshops identify and strengthen the natural leaders already on staff, so knowledge stays in the building. Custom skill sets define clear, measurable competencies for each department; role-specific progressions then map those competencies to leveling and career stages, so team members can see where they are today and where they can grow. DiSC and VARK learning-style analyses make sure training fits the way each person actually learns. Together, these give practices a repeatable framework for building skill, communication, and leadership across the whole team, rather than collecting isolated CE credits.
EVT cares about more than learning skills; they focus on the utilization of them. When team members are trusted to apply what they know, their confidence grows, engagement rises, and the culture of the whole team shifts. The top program tier adds 12 weeks of sustained leadership support and one-on-one coaching for up to 20 team members, which reflects a commitment to lasting change over one-off fixes.
Innovation is also part of EVT’s intentional approach. Hands-on clinical training is often limited by cost, equipment, and access, so EVT designed its own line of EVTraining models to close that gap. The line includes vein models, a feline urinary tract model for practicing urethral obstruction care and cystocentesis, a heart insert for CPR manikins, and an injection pad. These models let teams practice essential skills in their own hospitals, on their own schedules, and at a price point that works for practices of any size. Pairing them with Train-the-Trainer support makes hands-on learning affordable and sustainable. Skill-building can then become a regular part of practice life instead of a rare event.
EVT has collaborated with multiple organizations across the profession, ranging from national and international conferences, industry providers, and practice groups. Clients consistently describe meaningful shifts in team engagement, confidence, and retention. Resilience follows naturally from this work, but it is not the goal itself. When training and coaching are intentional and supportive, teams build strength on their own. By combining practical workflow tools with leadership development, EVT helps practices build well-trained, trusted teams that deliver stronger patient care and better practice performance. EVT will soon share this methodology with the world in their upcoming collaborative textbook, “Veterinary Training & Team Empowerment,” which Wiley is set to publish in Spring 2027.
Broad Ripple Animal Clinic
Brenda Tassava Medina has spent nearly three decades redefining veterinary practice leadership by connecting healthy workplace culture with operational excellence and exceptional patient care. As Hospital Administrator of Broad Ripple Animal Clinic, she helped the practice earn recognition as Indiana’s Most Psychologically Healthy Workplace and receive the Zoetis Diversity & Inclusion Award. She later turned those lessons into a national platform as a consultant, educator, speaker, author, VMG facilitator, and leader of Encore Veterinary Consulting. Brenda created the Compassion-Satisfaction Accredited Workplace, the first veterinary accreditation program focused on workplace well-being and team fulfillment and continues to develop leaders through the Encore Consulting Academy and FlightPlan Quick Consults podcast. As Chair of the CVPM Board, she helped move the certification examination to national testing centers, expanding access for practice managers. Her lasting impact is multiplied through the leaders she coaches to build sustainable, respectful workplaces where people and practices thrive.
VCA Animal Hospitals
Throughout her career, Mandy has believed that healthier veterinary workplaces are built by investing in people. Her work as a veterinary technician, educator, mentor, and leader has centered on creating environments where veterinary professionals feel supported, capable, valued, and empowered to grow.
That belief has shaped much of her work. Mandy has developed leadership bootcamps that help hospital leaders build their ability to support and develop others. These programs explored emotional intelligence, resilience, change, difficult conversations, mentorship, feedback, accountability, and culture. Participants practiced tools they could immediately use in their hospitals, grounded in one central message: leadership is measured in people.
Mandy has also worked to strengthen career development for veterinary patient care teams by helping hospitals implement structured competency and career progression programs. She encourages leaders to use assessments as opportunities for coaching, mentorship, recognition, and meaningful professional growth. Her goal is for veterinary assistants and technicians to see where they are today, understand where they can go next, and have someone willing to help them get there.
Education and mentorship have been threads throughout Mandy’s career. As an educator, she has worked to create learning environments where students feel comfortable being learners without the pressure to already have all the answers. As a mentor, she has supported veterinary technicians navigating education, leadership, career development, and the challenges of remaining in a demanding profession. Through her service within veterinary professional organizations, she continues working to strengthen opportunities, recognition, and professional pathways for veterinary technicians beyond the walls of any one hospital.
For Mandy, making veterinary medicine healthier means building teams with the tools, relationships, leadership, and support to navigate difficult days together. It means creating workplaces where asking for help is viewed as responsible, feedback helps people grow, leaders remain curious before becoming judgmental, and people can envision a future for themselves within the profession.
While Mandy is proud of the programs she has developed and the initiatives she has helped implement, she measures their impact through the people they support: the supervisor who approaches a difficult conversation differently, the technician who recognizes their own potential, the assistant who sees a career path they did not know existed, the student who becomes comfortable asking questions, and the leader who understands that developing people is central to their job.
This commitment to people is at the heart of Mandy’s work and her nomination as a Healthy Practice Champion.