AVMA spotlights advocacy career path through Jacey Cerda podcast

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The AVMA’s My Veterinary Life podcast has added another entry to its organized veterinary medicine series with an episode focused on the AVMA Government Relations Externship and the career path of Dr. Jacey Cerda. In the episode, Cerda is presented as an example of the profession’s range: she has worked as a veterinarian, attorney, Fulbright scholar, and researcher, and is now a biodiversity conservation and emergency response postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University. Outside the podcast itself, public profiles and Fulbright materials show Cerda’s current work centers on wildlife conservation, disaster response, and policy development, including a 2024-2025 Fulbright research appointment in Australia examining lessons from the response to the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires. (fulbright.org.au)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the episode underscores a familiar but still important message: advocacy and organized veterinary medicine can open career paths well beyond clinical practice. It also fits AVMA’s broader recent podcast messaging around leadership, engagement, and helping veterinarians see multiple ways to belong in the profession, whether through advocacy, volunteer leadership, clinical practice, or cross-sector work. AVMA has long used student advocacy and government relations programs to expose veterinarians and students to policymaking, legislative strategy, and professional leadership, and Cerda’s trajectory illustrates how those experiences can connect with One Health, wildlife health, public policy, and emergency preparedness work. (avma.org)

What to watch: Watch for whether AVMA continues building this podcast series into a broader recruitment tool for advocacy, externships, and early-career leadership in organized veterinary medicine—and whether it keeps pairing those stories with a wider message that veterinarians do not need a single fixed career path to make a meaningful impact in the profession. (avma.org)