AVMA spotlights advocacy careers through Dr. Jacey Cerda

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The AVMA’s My Veterinary Life podcast is spotlighting veterinary advocacy careers through an episode featuring Dr. Jacey Cerda, whose path spans clinical veterinary medicine, law, public health, conservation, and policy. In the episode, Cerda discusses the AVMA Government Relations Externship as part of a broader series on organized veterinary medicine and early-career involvement. Outside the podcast, Cerda is now a biodiversity conservation and emergency response postdoctoral researcher at Colorado State University, and a 2024-2025 Fulbright scholar studying how Australia’s Black Summer bushfire response can inform wildlife disaster preparedness and biodiversity protection frameworks. (fulbright.org.au)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the episode reinforces a point AVMA has been making more broadly: advocacy experience can shape careers far beyond traditional practice and can influence workforce, public health, rural access, disaster response, and animal welfare policy. That’s especially relevant as AVMA continues active federal advocacy on issues such as veterinary workforce shortages and student debt relief, including support for the reintroduced Rural Veterinary Workforce Act. Cerda’s multidisciplinary career offers a concrete example of how veterinarians can move between practice, policy, and systems-level work while still contributing directly to animal and public health. (avma.org)

What to watch: Expect AVMA to keep using this podcast series to recruit early-career veterinarians into organized medicine and advocacy, while policy debates around workforce shortages, student debt, and veterinary representation continue in Washington. (avma.org)