Diversity: Why do we care?

Dr. Lisa Greenhill is the Chief Diversity Officer and Senior Director for Institutional Research at American Association for Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). Her work primarily focuses on the ongoing development and implementation of the DiVersity Matters initiative at the national and local levels, a program established in 2005 to advocate for the recruitment and retention of underrepresented persons as students and faculty and ultimately fostering their success in veterinary medicine. Dr. Greenhill also directs the AAVMC’s national research agenda, where she collects and analyzes data and produces reports related to academic veterinary medicine to include the applicant pool, enrollment, institutional economic impact and diversity.

She is also an accomplished author, having published “Navigating Diversity and Inclusion in Veterinary Medicine,” which lays out the history of diversity in the veterinary profession and provides a road map to building a sustainably inclusive future in veterinary medicine. This includes practical strategies to attract students to careers in the veterinary profession and metrics and tools to assess the impact of these strategies.