This episode of Have You Herd? is hosted by Dr. Jen Roberts, chair of the AABP Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force and Professional Services Veterinarian for Boehringer-Ingelheim. Roberts is joined by Dr. Mia Cary, CEO and Change Agent for Cary Consulting and CEO of the PRIDE Veterinary Medical Community, and Dr. Kemba Marshall, Director of Veterinary Services at the Land-O-Lakes Purina Veterinary Nutrition Center who serves on the AVMA-AAVMC Diversity Equity and Inclusion Commission. Our guests discuss the definitions for diversity, equity and inclusion and why the AABP Board of Directors created this task force. We discuss the importance of ensuring that everyone feels welcome in rural mixed or large animal practice to improve recruitment and retention of veterinarians in our segment of the profession. We also discuss that veterinary medicine is the least diverse health profession and AAVMC publishes data on veterinary student demographics which can be found here. AAVMC also has a study that discusses the bias in admissions procedures. Cary and Marshall also discuss why it is important to ask demographic questions to our members and the problems with ignoring someone’s race, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation. Cary discusses some of the initiatives the PRIDE VMC has developed, including Journey for Teams to assist private practices in developing a working space that is inclusive for employees and clients. Our guests discuss the importance of allyship to help support those that are under-represented in veterinary medicine. Allyship resources can be found here and the AVMA has also developed a Brave Space Certificate program available on the AVMA AXON CE portal. We welcome our members to attend the upcoming keynote address from Dr. Vernard Hodges and join us for additional conversation on DEI over the lunch hour in room 104 at the convention center.