This article was originally printed in the November/December 2024 issue of the California Veterinarian magazine.

I joke that applying to veterinary school makes me think of trick or treating. I was the kid in the oversized white doctor coat with the stethoscope around my neck, knocking on the door of UC Davis while the admissions team scurried about inside, turning off the lights, pretending not to be home. For three years, I applied, to no avail. Four years after admission, I was elected by my classmates to offer a commencement speech. Unlikely was my career launch, and atypical has my career been.

I grew up among oak woods and rolling hills on the San Francisco Bay. I was outside much more than in, and wild places were my haunts. I wanted to be a veterinarian from the time I was in elementary school. My parents would later tell me that I went from wanting to be an animal to wanting to help them. My interests led me to part-time work during high school in small animal clinics, and my academic pursuits led me to UC San Diego for my undergraduate degree. While I loved wildlife, I saw my future in small animal practice.

It was on summer break when a friend told me about a volunteer opportunity at the California Marine Mammal Center (now, The Marine Mammal Center). With one volunteer shift, my career trajectory was sharply bent. Witnessing veterinarians working with seals and sea lions thrilled me. The notion that one could build a career in such a field lit a fire within me that has, well, never been extinguished.

After earning my undergraduate degree, my three years spent “trick or treating” allowed me to mature a bit while working at Sea World in San Diego. There, I gained vast experience in husbandry, animal training, public presentations, and more. Working as a sea lion trainer was one the most thrilling and exceptional jobs I’ve had.

In veterinary school, I pursued every networking, volunteer, and part-time work experience with wildlife that I could find. This included work at UC Davis’ California National Primate Research Center and California Raptor Center, leading the Avian/Exotics Club, and externing at the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Zoo. A classmate nicknamed me “Glaze” because I was spread so thin.

Entering my fourth year, I pivoted to applying for small animal internships. I reasoned that grounding myself in a more established discipline of veterinary practice would set me up well for the field of wildlife medicine, where so much was still evolving. I spent my first year out of school in an internship at a 24-veterinarian small animal practice in Los Angeles. Its location allowed me to spend days off volunteering at the zoo.

What’s the saying? “Good luck is where preparedness meets opportunity”? A consistency in my career has been the opening of doors at opportune times. As my internship ended, I filled a temporary clinical position at the Los Angeles Zoo, and a year later a friend and mentor recommended me for a veterinary role at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.

I stepped into work at Shedd Aquarium with both feet in clinical medicine and stepped away 16 years later having become a nonprofit administrator. Along the way, I was part of building the marine mammal collection, establishing the veterinary program, and developing conservation partnerships that took me to Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and the Arctic. Unwittingly, as I sat at the leadership table over the years, I was being groomed to run a conservation nonprofit by witnessing the work of my education, finance, marketing, facility, and development colleagues.

That aforementioned sharp bend in my career arc became a full circle in 2008, when I seized the chance to return to the Bay Area and run The Marine Mammal Center. Sixteen years later, I have stepped into an external relations role, telling the stories of our ocean conservation organization to influence policy and legislation and bring public funding to our work. The Center is a throughline from individual patient care and welfare all the way to ocean sustainability. What we learn about harmful algal blooms, cancer, and climate change puts us on the front lines of ocean surveillance.

I could not have begun to conceive all that veterinary medicine would allow me to do when I was that nature-loving kid exploring the Bay shoreline. A more fulfilling, timely, and environmentally relevant career, I cannot imagine.