Each year brings a natural reset for the Veterinary profession. Now that the new fiscal year is in full swing—and with two of our largest industry gatherings, Veterinary Meeting & Expo (VMX) and Western Veterinary Conference (WVC), behind us—a consistent theme has begun to emerge.
Across keynote stages, CE sessions, leadership meetings, and countless hallway conversations, one topic continues to surface again and again: Culture.
Organizations are rallying around it. Practices, corporate groups, associations, and industry partners are asking similar questions: How do we build strong cultures? How do we protect healthy ones? How do we repair cultures that are struggling?
Yet as these conversations unfold, an important question remains: Are we asking the right question in regard to culture?
Culture Isn’t a Statement—It’s a Lived Experience
Most organizations believe they understand their culture.
Large Veterinary organizations often invest heavily in research, employee engagement surveys, and structured feedback systems. They analyze sentiment and build initiatives designed to strengthen workplace environments.
But what about the independent Veterinary practice?
If you walked into a clinic tomorrow and asked every team member:
“How would you define this practice’s culture?”
Would the answers match?
Culture is not what leadership publishes on a website. Culture is what employees experience on an overbooked Tuesday afternoon, during an emotional client interaction, or when the team is navigating stress together. Culture lives in behavior—not branding.
Which leads to a deeper question: Does your organization know who is actively shaping that culture every day?
Meet the Cultural Curators
Every organization—especially Veterinary practices—has cultural curators.
These are the individuals who:
- Set the emotional tone of the workplace
- Welcome new employees and help them feel included
- De-escalate tension without being asked
- Model how colleagues and clients should be treated
- Reinforce standards even when leadership isn’t present
They are rarely identified on an organizational chart. They are not always managers or owners. And often, they don’t recognize the influence they hold. Yet they quietly curate how culture is experienced. Through daily actions, they determine what is encouraged, what is tolerated, and what ultimately becomes normalized within a team.
The Hidden Leadership Role
Cultural curators are informal leaders.
- They translate mission into action.
- They demonstrate values rather than announce them.
- They create psychological safety through consistency and trust.
In Veterinary medicine, these individuals are frequently:
- Veterinary technicians
- Client service professionals
- Long-tenured assistants
- Associate veterinarians who mentor naturally
- Team members others instinctively turn to for guidance
When a new hire asks, “How do things really work here?” they rarely consult a handbook. They watch the cultural curator. These individuals become the living operating system of a practice.
Why Cultural Curators Matter More Than Ever
The Veterinary profession is navigating significant change:
- Workforce shortages
- Increasing client expectations
- Economic pressures affecting access to care
- Growing emotional labor across teams
During times of stress, culture becomes fragile. Policies alone do not sustain culture. People do.
Cultural curators stabilize organizations during uncertainty. They preserve trust during ownership transitions, staffing shortages, workflow changes, and periods of growth. Yet there is a critical reality leaders must acknowledge:
Cultural curators often carry invisible emotional labor.
- They mentor new hires.
- They absorb tension.
- They maintain morale.
And without intentional recognition or support, they can become exhausted. When a cultural curator leaves, leaders are often surprised by how quickly morale shifts, communication breaks down, or team cohesion weakens. What was lost wasn’t simply an employee. It was the person holding the culture together.
Leadership’s Responsibility: Protect the Curators
If cultural curators are essential to organizational health, leadership responsibility must evolve.
Leaders should ask:
- Do we know who our cultural curators are? Not who manages operations—but who shapes trust and belonging.
- Have we acknowledged their influence? Recognition validates the emotional leadership they provide.
- Are we unintentionally over-relying on them? Many curators shoulder mentoring, conflict resolution, and emotional support without formal authority.
- What systems exist to protect them? Career pathways, inclusion in decision-making, boundaries, and recognition matter.
Protecting culture means protecting the people who curate it daily.
A Simple Exercise for Every Practice
Try this exercise with your team: Ask anonymously, “Who best represents the culture of this practice?”
You may discover:
- The same name appears repeatedly.
- Leadership is surprised by the answer.
- The individual identified has never been formally empowered.
In that moment, culture stops being theoretical—and becomes human.
Culture Is Not Built From the Top Down
One of the greatest misconceptions about organizational culture is that it originates solely from leadership.
Leadership establishes vision. But culture spreads peer to peer.
Veterinary medicine has always been relationship-driven. Our profession’s strength lies not only in clinical excellence, but in individuals who model compassion, resilience, and teamwork every day. Cultural curators ensure those values endure beyond mission statements or industry buzzwords. They are the translators of organizational identity.
The Question Moving Forward
As conversations sparked at VMX and WVC continue across the profession, perhaps the question we should be asking isn’t:
“How do we build culture?”
Instead:
“Do we know who is already curating it—and are we doing enough to support them?”
Because culture isn’t created in strategy meetings.
It is curated, protected, and passed forward by individuals who show up every day and shape how Veterinary medicine feels—for colleagues, clients, and the communities we serve.
And recognizing them may be the most important cultural investment any organization can make.