Why mentors matter – especially for black veterinarians: One doctor’s story

Mentors matter.

That may resonate for people in many professions, but it rings especially true to Dr. Bonnie Barclay when she thinks of African-Americans who aspire to become veterinarians.

Barclay helps train sales reps and veterinary customers as a senior professional services veterinarian at Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health USA Inc.

As an African-American veterinarian, she also represents a statistical anomaly: Blacks make up 2.1 percent of veterinarians in the United States even though they comprise 12 percent of the workforce, according to the 2017 stats from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“It’s a field most blacks don’t even consider,” says Barclay, who lives in Atlanta.

To encourage more African-Americans to explore veterinary careers, she speaks with students at historically black universities. She also has hired and mentored minority interns and staffers in a career that spans more than 30 years.

Barclay says aspiring black veterinarians benefit from seeing living examples that they can pursue their passion. She says it is important for professionals like her to open doors for the next generation, to give them a chance.

That belief is born of personal experience.

Growing Up

Barclay says she always knew she wanted to become a veterinarian.

As a girl growing up in Detroit, she often traveled in the summer to her grandparent’s farm in Crawfordville, Georgia, population 534 by the latest count. Her grandparents raised cattle, and those summer trips nurtured her interest in animals.

“When you’re a small child and you love animals, everybody says you should be a vet,” Barclay says. “Sometimes it sticks.”

She followed her passion to undergraduate degrees in zoology and animal science from two historically black universities – Howard University and Tuskegee University, where she went on to earn a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree.

While at Tuskegee, Barclay says, she told a professor she wanted to apply her training to care for racehorses. The professor introduced her to Dr. Ernest Colvin, an African-American dentist in Baltimore who owned racehorses and who would later become the first black chairman of the Maryland Racing Commission.

Colvin helped Barclay find work with racehorses at a time when most equine vets at the track were white men.

“I definitely did not meet that perception,” she says.

Barclay practiced as a vet for 13 years in Michigan, Washington D.C. and Kansas City, working with horses and small animals. She earned an MBA, went to work in the mid-1990s for an animal-health company and joined Boehringer Ingelheim in 2009.

She says she never forgot the opportunity that dentist in Baltimore gave her so many years ago.

“That’s why I am very much involved with the alumni group at Tuskegee,” she says.

‘There are unconscious biases’

It has not always been easy for Barclay as a black veterinarian.

“In America, there are unconscious biases,” she says. “Because you don’t look a certain way, or act a certain way, or speak a certain way, sometimes you won’t have as many opportunities.”

Her solution? To buckle down, work harder and try to surmount whatever obstacles life puts in her way.

She knows the stats.

More than 91 percent of veterinarians in the United States are white, the federal government said in 2017. African-Americans also are under-represented in related fields. They make up 2.3 percent of veterinary assistants and lab animal caretakers and 2.8 percent of non-farm animal caretakers.

The American Veterinary Medical Association launched an effort in 2005 to increase diversity at U.S. veterinary colleges. It says it encourages veterinary schools to devote time, energy and resources to increase the number of historically underrepresented students in programs that lead to a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, to graduate culturally competent professionals and to create inclusive learning environments. In the 10 years after the program started, the proportion of historically underrepresented students in vet schools increased from 9.7 percent to 14.6 percent, the AVMA said in 2015.

“During our science education, veterinarians and veterinary technicians learn that genetic diversity and biodiversity make for a stronger species or a stronger ecosystem—one that is more able to adapt to change and external pressures, compared with its non-diverse counterpart,” the AVMA says. “Taken at face value, then, diversity and inclusion would seem to be traits for a group, a practice, a business, a company, or an association to strive for. But it’s not always easy.”

‘There is always someone who opens the door’

Barclay tries to give back.

Years ago, she says, she hired students in a minority internship program at another company. One student, she says, went on to star in a nationally televised program about veterinary life.

The Tuskegee Veterinary Medical Alumni Association honored her with a Distinguished Service Award in 2008. The Kansas City Royals honored her that same year as a new member of the Black Achievers Society of Greater Kansas City.

Often in speaking engagements, she says, she tries to paint a picture for college students of the options that can await them in the veterinary field, such as working in a practice or focusing on research and development for animal-health or human-pharma companies.

“There are a zillion things a veterinarian can do,” she says.

It is possible, of course, that by giving back she will inspire students not only to become veterinarians but to continue the cycle of paving the way for others to follow, as well.

“I believe that to whom much is given, much is required,” she says.

She mentions the Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars Program. It provides veterinary students in the U.S. and Europe with summer research stipends to work with faculty research mentors to gain insights into the scientific process. All U.S. veterinary colleges, including Tuskegee University, have been part of the program for over two decades

The company also is refining a new strategy to better attract underrepresented students to careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

In ways big and small, she says, mentors touch the lives of others and open new possibilities.

“There is always someone who opens the door,” she says. “You just never know who that person is going to be.”