The College of Veterinary Medicine hosted a one-day women’s leadership conference for students, graduate students and faculty on Saturday, Oct. 29.
The conference was open to students from Tuskegee and Auburn University’s Colleges of Veterinary Medicine and Auburn students enrolled in medical curriculums.
The keynote speaker was Dr. Stacy Pritt, vice president of the American Veterinary Medical Association. The lecture was titled, “One Size Does Not Fit All,” and it discussed leadership topics and development programs available.
Markike Visser, Auburn alum and the woman behind the conference, said Dr. Pritt has been a great mentor to her. “She has a lot of experience with not only giving these talks about leadership, but then being able to understand what leadership encompasses,” Visser said.
Visser said the process of planning the conference began after she had a conversation with people at the Women’s Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative. “That came around because the American Veterinary Association, which is the overarching organization, recognized that even though female veterinarians make up over 50% of the vet professional organization, there seemed to be a pipeline problem in that the leadership did not reflect the makeup of the group in general,” Visser said.
At first it was just going to be veterinary students, veterinarians and mainly our own faculty here, Visser said. “But then we started reading and realized this is not just a vet problem. This goes across the STEM in general. This is a problem across the board.”
“Unfortunately, Auburn is behind in female leadership compared to other schools. If you go to the Women’s Leadership Center on Auburn’s campus, through their website, they actually have graphics that show compared to Michigan and other schools where we are compared to them, and we are very far behind,” Visser said.
For vet students, the conference focused on the compensation gap in veterinary medicine, according to Visser. “They [Women’s Leadership Center] just published a report that shows that a female veterinary student graduating with a male at the same time, can expect to make $2000 less—straight out of vet school.”
The importance of mentors and networking was another big theme of the conference, Visser said.
“I wished something like this was offered while I was a vet student. It took me close to five years to realize the importance of mentors and the importance of recognizing the problems and not trying to ignore them and feeling confident enough to do this,” Visser said. “I think unfortunately that in our current political climate it becomes all the more important to become your own advocate as well.”
“Very few people are born a leader so there’s skills that anyone could learn. This workshop is basically wanted to recognize the challenges and starting to develop these skills to be able to fill the needs,” Visser said.
Visser said reading information about the gap between male and female veterinarians is what inspired her to create the conference. “Coming straight out of vet school you already have this gap, and the gap just continues to grow and grow, even though when we come out of med school, we come out with the same amount of debt, but it’s going to take us twice as long to pay everything back,” Visser said.
Visser worked closely with two other Auburn alums, Melissa Singletary and Cheryl Lawson to put on the event.
When asked what advice she would give to a freshman woman, Singletary said, “The worst they’re going to tell you is no. So don’t cut your own self short from being able to achieve great things, because the only person who is truly standing in your way is yourself, and if you can get past that, you can do anything.”
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