AVMA spotlights advocacy career path through Jacey Cerda

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The AVMA’s My Veterinary Life podcast is continuing its focus on career pathways in organized veterinary medicine with a new episode featuring Dr. Jacey Cerda, centered on the AVMA Government Relations externship and where that experience can lead. The episode positions Cerda as an example of how advocacy exposure during training can connect to a much broader professional arc, from policy and law to conservation and emergency response work. (thevetgazette.com)

That framing fits a longer AVMA effort to introduce students and early-career veterinarians to organized veterinary medicine through externships, leadership programming, and advocacy events. AVMA has promoted headquarters externships and government relations opportunities for years, describing them as ways for students to explore policy, state and federal advocacy, and association work. The association has also used student fly-ins and related programming to encourage veterinarians in training to become more engaged in legislative and regulatory issues affecting the profession. (avma.org)

Cerda’s background helps explain why AVMA chose her for this profile. Publicly available biographies describe her as a veterinarian, attorney, and postdoctoral researcher at Colorado State University with interests spanning wildlife health, biodiversity conservation, emergency and disaster medicine, zoonotic parasitology, and policy. A 2025 Fulbright profile says her project analyzes Australia’s response to the 2019-2020 Black Summer fires as a model for building emergency biodiversity support teams that can protect, extract, and triage wildlife during fires in the U.S. and elsewhere. Federation University, which hosted her fellowship work in Australia, said Cerda aimed to translate lessons from that response into U.S. frameworks, training programs, and policy toolkits for wildlife agencies and decision-makers. (portal.wfoh.org)

That broader context makes the podcast more than a career profile. Cerda’s own public-facing biographies describe a path from wildlife fieldwork to trial law and then into veterinary medicine, with the common thread being an interest in how science, policy, and on-the-ground animal welfare intersect. In a student-written account of her AVMA Government Relations Division externship, she described her route into veterinary medicine as “windy,” tying together wildlife biology, legal training, zoonotic parasite research, and veterinary school. That combination aligns closely with AVMA’s current effort to show that organized veterinary medicine isn’t limited to association governance, but can open doors into advocacy, public service, and systems-level work. (thevetgazette.com)

Direct outside expert reaction to this specific podcast episode was limited in public search results. But industry context points in the same direction: AVMA and affiliated student programming have consistently framed advocacy experiences as professional development, not just volunteer service. Previous AVMA coverage of government relations externs and legislative fly-ins has emphasized that these programs give participants firsthand exposure to policymaking, lobbying, and federal veterinary careers, while helping them build networks that can shape long-term career decisions. (avma.org)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, especially those mentoring students or early-career associates, the Cerda episode reflects a bigger workforce and leadership conversation. At a time when the profession is discussing sustainability, debt, career flexibility, public health, and disaster readiness, stories like this broaden the picture of what veterinary training can support. They may also help practices and institutions better understand why some veterinarians are seeking hybrid careers that combine clinical work with policy, public service, academia, wildlife health, or emergency response. (avma.org)

There’s also a regulatory angle. Government relations externships give future veterinarians early exposure to the legislative and regulatory infrastructure that shapes everyday practice, from workforce policy and education funding to animal health preparedness and professional regulation. Even for clinicians who never work in Washington, that kind of literacy can matter when new rules, reimbursement questions, telemedicine debates, or public health emergencies affect hospitals and pet parents. Cerda’s career is an unusually high-profile example of that principle taken to its fullest extent. (avma.org)

What to watch: Watch for whether AVMA uses this and related My Veterinary Life episodes to further formalize organized veterinary medicine as a recruitment lane for students, and whether Cerda’s conservation and disaster-response work generates additional policy-facing publications, toolkits, or training models in 2026. (federation.edu.au)