AVMA spotlights advocacy careers through Dr. Jacey Cerda episode

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AVMA is using its My Veterinary Life platform to put a spotlight on veterinary advocacy careers, this time through an episode featuring Dr. Jacey Cerda, a veterinarian, attorney, and researcher whose résumé cuts across several corners of the profession. The episode, listed by Apple Podcasts as published October 2, 2025, focuses on Cerda’s experience with the AVMA Government Relations Division externship and how that work fit into a broader career that now includes biodiversity conservation and emergency response research. (podcasts.apple.com)

That message fits into a longer AVMA effort to expose students and early-career veterinarians to organized medicine and policymaking. AVMA’s Governmental Relations Division externship has been around for decades, with archival AVMA coverage showing the program gave veterinary students a chance to spend time in Washington, D.C., learning how Congress and federal agencies affect veterinary medicine while helping advance the association’s legislative agenda. AVMA has also maintained formal criteria for the program, including completion of at least the second year of veterinary school and an interest in politics or the policymaking process. (avma.org)

Cerda’s story gives that program a particularly broad frame. Outside the podcast, public biographies describe her as a Colorado State University postdoctoral researcher and veterinarian with prior experience as a litigation attorney, wildlife biologist, and policy-focused communicator. Federation University in Australia said in March 2025 that Cerda was spending four months there as a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow, studying lessons from Australia’s 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires to help build biodiversity management, wildlife welfare, and disaster-response frameworks that could be applied in the U.S. (portal.wfoh.org)

That broader context matters because the podcast is not announcing a regulatory action or policy change on its own. Instead, it reflects how AVMA is framing advocacy as part of veterinary career development. In the Apple Podcasts description, the association says the conversation highlights “the versatility of veterinary careers,” “the importance of advocacy,” and opportunities like the AVMA Government Relations Division externship for students interested in policy. That framing lines up with AVMA’s wider advocacy messaging, including its current push for federal action on rural veterinary shortages through the reintroduced Rural Veterinary Workforce Act and continued support for the Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program. (podcasts.apple.com)

Direct outside commentary on this specific episode was limited, but the available material points to a consistent industry theme: veterinary organizations are trying to make nontraditional and policy-facing careers more visible earlier in the professional pipeline. AVMA’s recent My Veterinary Life episodes on organized veterinary medicine, including conversations with Drs. Karen Cross, Brennan Pitard, and Sara Verghis, similarly emphasize volunteering, leadership, and shaping the future of the profession through association work. In that sense, Cerda’s episode appears to be part of a larger editorial and professional-development strategy, not a one-off feature. (podcasts.apple.com)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, especially students, interns, residents, and early-career associates, the significance is practical. Policy decisions affect student debt, workforce incentives, telehealth rules, scope-of-practice debates, public health preparedness, and animal welfare oversight. A program like the AVMA externship gives future veterinarians exposure to how those decisions are made, while Cerda’s career illustrates that advocacy experience can translate into roles in conservation, emergency response, academia, and organized medicine, not just Capitol Hill. That may resonate with clinicians who want to influence the system around practice, not only the work inside the exam room. (avma.org)

What to watch: The next signal to watch is whether AVMA expands promotion of student advocacy pathways, fellowships, and externships as workforce pressures and federal veterinary policy debates continue through 2026; if it does, Cerda’s episode may look less like a profile and more like part of a broader recruitment effort into policy leadership. (avma.org)