Speakers

Elizabeth “Betsy” Charles, DVM, MA

Elizabeth “Betsy” Charles, DVM, MA combines a wide variety of professional experiences with her love of veterinary medicine in order to help others be the best they can be. She believes we all have the capacity to be exceptional people of influence by learning the skill sets necessary to become effective communicators, relationship builders and boundary setters. After completing an internship in equine referral practice, Dr. Charles spent a year in ambulatory practice followed by 6 years in performance horse practice where she was the director of her practice’s imaging center. She completed an alternative track residency program in diagnostic imaging while also serving as a member of the faculty at Western University of Health Sciences where she taught until 2017. She has also served as an adjunct professor at Washington State University for several years.

Dr. Charles holds a master’s degree in Organization Leadership and pairs that expertise with veterinary medicine to help veterinary professionals understand how emotionally intelligent servant leaders can facilitate the development of high functioning organizations. Her master’s thesis dealt with implementing change initiatives within veterinary practice. She is passionate about helping others understand that change, whether personal or professional, can be difficult but is necessary and exciting. She also believes that veterinary medicine in the 21st century requires new leadership models and strategies in order to thrive. She has presented on leadership topics at the state and national levels in numerous venues including over half of the veterinary colleges in the U.S., numerous state VMA’s, the AAEP national convention, NAVC, and the AVMA-VLC. She has served on the AVMA’s Council on Communication, the AAEP’s Leadership Development Committee and was a long time member of AAEP’s Student Programs Task Force.

Currently, Dr. Charles is the Executive Director of the Veterinary Leadership Institute. She is also developing an online radiology training opportunity for veterinary students, new graduates and veterinary technicians called RadiologyRules. When she takes a break from trying to make a positive difference for the profession, she enjoys having meaningful and authentic conversations with all who cross her path, developing young entrepreneurs as they pursue their passions, riding her horse Lenny, reading, and hiking with her red heeler, Sadie.

Alan Knott, DVM

Dr. Alan Knott is the Director of Operations and Co-Owner with his wife at Cornerstone Veterinary Hospital Of Clifton Park. He enjoys all aspects of veterinary medicine and has experience working with a wide variety of animals including dogs, cats, cows, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, alpacas and even an elephant! Dr. Knott truly loves spending time with people, fostering the human-animal bond with exceptional customer service and high-quality animal care. Dr. Alan Knott was born and raised in Ohio and spent his entire collegiate career at The Ohio State University, where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture in 2002 and his Doctorate Degree in Veterinary Medicine in 2006. Dr. Knott is a Buckeye through and through, and is passionate about Ohio State athletics, especially Buckeye Football! His wife, Dr. Lisa Knott (absolute rockstar wife, mother, and veterinarian) and two children, Lillian -10 (who has her Daddy wrapped around her finger) and Andrew -7 (who is a mini version of his father) are the center of his world along with his faith. Dr. Alan Knott enjoys being outdoors, golfing, landscaping and gardening.

Mark Nunez, DVM

Dr. Mark Nunez is an LSU grad, class of 2002. Aside from the second half of his Air Force career, he’s lived in Louisiana all of his life until 3 days after graduation, when he moved to New York. He’s still not used to the cold, or taxes, or traffic, but he really loves it there!

Mark co-own’s two practices on Long Island, NY, Levittown Animal Hospital and Farmingdale Dog and Cat Clinic. They are actually on the same street! LAH is AAHA accredited and Low-Stress Handling certified.

Their hospitals have experienced very rapid growth over the past 8 years. As you can imagine, this rate of growth has created some interesting challenges! His focus since 2017 has been leadership development.  He’s learned a lot and looks forward to learning more. Their number one goal is creating an outstanding client experience (assuming we all want top-notch medicine), and managing staff is a close second.

Ericka Mendez, DVM

Dr. Ericka Mendez is a veterinarian, veterinary mentor and an advocate for mental health in the veterinary profession.  Her mission is to empower veterinary professionals to take control of their own emotional well being which then creates an environment where wellness is the norm and not the exception for the entire veterinary team.  She enjoys teaching veterinarians and their teams tools to help them navigate their stressful work environments and she shares her insights and journey to becoming more purposeful on her blog The Purposeful Vet.

Melanie Kramer

Melanie Kramer is the editorial director for Dr.AndyRoark.com, the director of live events for and marketing director for Uncharted Veterinary Conference and Community.

After a 5-year stint at Aol, Kramer joined the launch team of vetstreet.com, one of the largest consumer-focused online veterinary platforms in 2011. She helped the business quickly grow to over 3 million unique visitors per month with original veterinarian-reviewed content syndicated to Aol, Yahoo, Today.com, Huffington Post, MSN and Google. As editorial director Kramer directed new video series, established new medical columns and helped build the site’s social media to over 500,000 Facebook fans. She was also the editor-in-chief of HealthyPet Magazine.

Her consulting business has worked on highly successful corporate content creation platforms for Fortune 500 brands such as Coca-Cola.

She is a graduate of the American University School of Communications where she obtained her masters in arts in interactive Journalism. She began her career as a photographer at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper then moved into photo editing, writing and editing.

She is also a registered yoga teacher with the goal of bringing the health benefits of yoga and meditation to people in high-stress workplaces.

Katie Berlin, DVM

Katie Berlin is a small animal general practitioner at a Fear Free-certified, AAHA -accredited private practice in York, PA. She graduated from Williams College in 2000 with a degree in Art History and worked in art museums before going back to school and earning her DVM from Cornell in 2009. She is a blogger, certified personal trainer and marathoner, and co-host of the Veterinary Super Friends podcast with Carrie Jurney of Not One More Vet. Through the podcast and her website, The Vet Reset, she hopes to help veterinary professionals find sustainability and happiness by focusing on both mental and physical wellness.