This month we’re putting the Pet Pals Spotlight on Alyssa Mages, Co-Founder and Chief Visionary Officer at EVT: Empowering Veterinary Teams.

Alyssa spends her days helping to develop and streamline veterinary teams of all types, from equipment providers to National Hospital Networks.

When did you know that you wanted to get into veterinary medicine?

I think it was always in my subconscious, but I was so focused on marine biology that I missed the signals! It wasn’t until 2003 that I finally tuned in and realized I could help so many more through vet med and doing that in conjunction with research & conservation work.  I started volunteering at my local GP & the rest is history!

Could you please let us know what Empowering Veterinary Teams (EVT) does?

Our motto is that we’ll meet you where you are with what you need, and that’s what we strive to do. Our primary offering is an EVTraining program that provides a practice (GP, specialty/ER) with everything they need to establish a successful training team & implement coaching & training from onboarding through growth & development.

When we’re not working on the floor with our EVTrainers, we’re creating dynamic CE that we provide either virtually via webinars or live for our more didactic seminars – DIY workshops, advanced skill labs, etc. We also work with several industry providers to ensure that their learning & development curriculums is relevant & impactful.

To sum it up, we’re working to inspire, instruct, impact – together.

What made you want to start EVT?

Both Caitlin (Caitlin Keat, MSM – co-founder & COO) and I had reached a point in our careers where we felt limited, constrained, and frustrated – for multiple reasons. We were helping and making a positive impact in a microcosmic way, and we both felt the draw to take our passion & compassion out into the world. We’ve been friends for nearly 20 years and have seen each other through a LOT – this venture was another amazing journey that we wanted to undertake for our personal growth and to revitalize the veterinary world.

If you could change 1 thing in veterinary medicine, what would it be?

Only 1 thing?  There are many aspects we would love to change, but the most prevalent would be the fixed mindset. That standard response of – this is the way it’s always been, or this is how we’ve always done it. Hmm…and how’s that working out for us? It’s not! 

The only way to enact change is to refocus how we approach change in general – we must grow with it and literally go with it, or else we’re left behind.