52 25 July/1 August 2020 | VET RECORD

INTERVIEW

‘Change is a marathon, not a sprint’ Mandisa Greene is a name for the history books. As the first black president of the RCVS, she strives to increase diversity in the professions. Here, Josh Loeb chats to her about her plans for the year.

THE story of Mandisa Greene’s journey to becoming a vet, and subsequently president of the RCVS, is in many ways beautifully simple.

Ever since her earliest days as a child in Trinidad, caring for animals was an all-consuming passion for Greene.

‘It always felt to me like caring for animals was something good,’ she explains from her home in Stoke. ‘I guess when you’re a child, you don’t necessarily have the vocabulary, you just have how it feels. Either it feels good or it doesn’t feel good. And, to me, caring for animals always felt good. I always felt uplifted by it.’

‘There was never a time in my life when I fell out of love with animals,’ she adds. ‘It’s always been the thing that brought me joy and fed my soul.’

Unsurprisingly, as soon as she knew what the word ‘vet’ meant, she threw herself into the process of becoming one.

She succeeded eventually – via the somewhat circuitous route of first gaining a degree in biological and medicinal chemistry from the University of Exeter. After graduating from the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, Edinburgh, in 2008, she worked in emergency and critical care roles and, somehow, amid all this intense studying and work, she managed to find time to get married and have two children.

Not content with simply being a vet, however, Greene wanted to help lead the profession. So she stood for RCVS council, and, in 2014, was elected.

But the story didn’t end there. Earlier this month Greene made history by being inaugurated as the first black president of the RCVS – the veterinary Barack Obama. As she noted in her inaugural speech, when the RCVS was founded in 1844 ‘this would have been unthinkable – that

a woman, let alone a black woman, would become president’.

While her presidency demonstrated progress, she stressed in her speech there is still ‘plenty to do’ on widening access to veterinary careers.

So, what needs to be done, and how big is the challenge?

Very big, according to some. Last month a petition sent to the RCVS alleged that every part of veterinary medicine is affected by deep ‘structural racism’ (VR, 27 June/4 July 2020, vol 186, p 625) .

Similarly, Animal Aspirations, a group set up to encourage young people from diverse backgrounds to consider veterinary careers, wrote a passionate open letter last month stating that it would be ‘irresponsible’ to continue fulfilling this role because underrepresented groups did not receive enough support (https://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/186/19/e23).

What, then, does Greene think of these developments? Does she believe racism in veterinary medicine is really all pervasive? Is it ‘irresponsible’ to encourage young black people to become vets?

‘I don’t know what led to their [Animal Aspirations’] statement. I certainly don’t think they’ve ceased their existence, so I’m going to be hopeful that they haven’t stopped doing what they’re doing,’ Greene replies.

‘I think their setup – young people going out and talking to other young people to encourage them into the profession – is a good thing.’

Is the veterinary profession institutionally racist?

There is a lengthy pause before Greene replies: ‘I don’t think so.’

What, then, can be done to make it more diverse?

‘Change is a marathon, not a sprint,’ Greene answers. ‘If you want

to be able to see palpable change, that’s something that’s going to take time. That’s one thing that we need to appreciate – it’s not going to be an overnight change. There’s no quick fix, and we need to appreciate that.

‘There are layers to this issue. The first is that we need to get young, gifted black and ethnic minority students to see veterinary medicine as an option.

‘The whole idea of widening participation is that we need to be able to attract some of those students over to veterinary medicine. We do have black and ethnic minority students overrepresented, compared to the national average, in medicine.

‘So we know there are black and ethnic minority students who are robust enough to do a veterinary medicine course, who are talented enough to do the course, and who can do a five-year course without finances being an option. We need to get them to think of veterinary medicine as an option. That’s the first thing.’

Boosting diversity in the profession has been a case of leading by example for Greene, who has personally encouraged young

There was never a time in my life when I fell out of love with animals

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INTERVIEW

people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds who thought that veterinary medicine ‘wasn’t for them’ to apply to vet school.

‘One important factor is the whole idea that you “can’t be what you can’t see”, or “if you can see it, you can be it”,’ she says. ‘If you’re not seeing people like you, who look like you, then you might not think that a veterinary career is for you.

‘We need to be able to show positive visual role models so young people can see that and can think, “Hey, that looks alright, I think I might want to try that”.

‘Then, once they’re at vet school, they need to have understood what they’re going into and what it involves so that they have a good time through vet school.

‘And then, when they graduate, we need to make sure we have people in the profession who are happy, who have a happy, healthy career.’

All of which sounds relatively simple – in theory at least. It’s a refreshingly hopeful message: that change can happen, even if it might take time.

Along with wanting to boost diversity, Greene has plenty of other issues on her presidential plate. Above all, she hopes to use her platform as RCVS president to ‘celebrate the value of the general practitioner vet’.

She explains: ‘We have GP vets working day in, day out, doing what’s considered very normal – just doing,

kind of, day-to-day stuff. ‘It’s not fancy stuff. It’s not the

million pound surgeries and things like that, but it still has value. I’d like the profession to swing back to seeing the value of what is normal and what is everyday. Because there is value in being able to appreciate that and to appreciate the people doing that.’

To see beauty in simplicity, so to speak?

‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘I would very much like us to appreciate the simplicity and the everyday work that general practitioner vets do.’

Greene also has Brexit – rarely described as ‘simple’ – to contend with. On 31 December, the UK is due to leave the EU’s single market and customs union – the technical Brexit, as opposed to the constitutional Brexit that has already taken place.

What Brexit-related challenges is the profession bracing itself for? How can it future proof itself for the post-Brexit era?

Greene is reluctant to be drawn – ‘I can’t possibly answer that question because I don’t know what’s going to happen’ – but is keen to emphasise her support for European vets.

‘One of the things that troubled me when the [Brexit] vote came in was the rise that we saw in reported hate crimes against our European colleagues,’ she says.

‘I think the ability to stay [in the UK] and the choice to stay are two different things, and what I would certainly like to do with this year is to

Mandisa Greene always wanted to become a vet. She’s pictured here hoof trimming in 2000 (left), and enjoying time with animals while at Edinburgh vet school (above and right)

make sure that we create a community and an environment where European vets don’t only have the ability to stay but feel that they want to stay.

‘There’s something different about feeling you belong somewhere as opposed to just being there, so certainly that’s going to be one of the things I would like to achieve this year.

‘I would like to use every opportunity I have to communicate to European vets that they are adding value, that they’re doing a really good job, that their skills are very much needed.’

On Brexit-related challenges, she adds: ‘What we’ve seen throughout the Covid-19 pandemic is that we have a profession of hugely resilient vets who have risen to the challenge of uncertainty and have adapted to provide the highest possible animal welfare standards.

‘That’s the thing we know for sure – that in any eventuality, whatever comes, we know that we have a profession that will rise to the challenge and adapt and be resilient and still be able to deliver the highest possible quality of service.’

Returning to her own life story, has the reality of being a vet matched up to her childhood dream?

‘It’s exceeded it,’ she replies. She says: ‘As a child, you want

to be the person on the other side of the table handling the animals and helping the animals, but what I didn’t appreciate as a child was what that would feel like to me – to be the person on the other side of the table helping the animals, but also building relationships with clients, being able to see an animal get better after I’ve given it some treatments or when it’s come back two days later and is completely better.

‘That just makes me feel great. There’s no other word for it. As a child I probably could not have appreciated what that would feel like.’

Though calmly spoken, Greene is a powerhouse of veterinary ambition – living proof that no-one’s background should be seen as a barrier to inspirational achievement.

Was she born to be a vet? ‘I think so,’ she replies immediately.

And it’s as simple as that. ●

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