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Emma Christie survived the UK’s foot-and-mouth crisis and has carved out a lucrative leadership career in an extremely competitive market. Now the OurVet’s chief veterinary officer has made it her mission to ensure others feel equally supported to succeed. By Tracey Porter
Throughout a career spanning more than two decades, Dr Emma Christie has worked for animal health organisations of all sizes.
But when the news came that Australia’s largest independently-owned pet specialty store, PetO, was set to acquire her place of employment as part of a court-enforced divestiture notice, the then OurVet general manager was a little uncertain.
As someone who had spent her entire veterinary career mentoring and coaching vets, nurses and new graduates to build integrative teams and support individual development, she was understandably curious as to how this would look in a new business.
Particularly when she had become part of an ownership structure that had grown from 17 NSW-based stores to 58 retail stores nationally, seemingly overnight. Not that OurVet feels anything like what a business of its size should feel like, she insists. “I wouldn’t view us as a large organisation; in fact, it feels very intimate. This is because I know everybody in the veterinary teams, and they all know me. There is not one single day that goes by that I would not be talking to team members in our clinics. So it really doesn’t have that ‘large corporation feel’ that has all these individuals that I don’t recognise.”
A holistic approach
Since taking over OurVet in 2024, not only have PetO’s Australian owners Nick Greenhalgh and David Rowe expanded Dr Christie’s remit by naming her chief veterinary officer (CVO), they have also backed her approach by giving her carte blanche to establish an in-house veterinary clinical advocacy group.
They then put her in charge.
Unique in its set-up, the group was established as a peer-to-peer offering. “We regularly review our standards as well as our approach to things to help identify best practices and then use that knowledge to inform the entire network,” explains Dr Christie. “You don’t have to be a senior vet to be in this group, however those with special interests in some part of what we do are invited to join and challenged to help us grow as a whole to ensure a happy, healthy life for pets, their families and our teams.”
This approach has clearly hit a chord with patients, owners and staff alike, with several graduate vets and nurse teams that began working at OurVet at the same time Dr Christie joined its ranks still happily employed by the business.
A change in tack
The buyout was not the first time Dr Christie found herself facing a quandary due to changes within the veterinary sector.
My teams all know that when I walk into a clinic and see animals there, they know I’m interested in talking to them about their cases. It was never about not wanting to do the clinical work; it was always about wanting to support others.
Dr Emma Christie, chief veterinary officer, OurVet
Born in Yorkshire in the UK, she initially attended Glasgow University with the intention of becoming a large animal vet. “I was from a rural town but really wanted a career where I had a lot of interaction with people. Obviously, I was very interested in science and medicine too, but I was drawn to the idea of working with people in situations where I could care for their animals while also building a relationship with them,” she says.
What she can’t have foreseen was that within months of her completing her training, the UK would be impacted by a disastrous foot-and-mouth epidemic that would result in the mass slaughtering of around six million sheep, cattle and pigs, affecting thousands of farms and taking a devastating toll on the UK economy through lost tourism and trade.
The young graduate and her colleagues were quite literally stopped in their tracks.
Dr Christie says it was then she began to realise the advantages of working with the owners of companion animals for the lifetime of their pets.
“It happened in my final year of vet school, and it transformed veterinary practice in that year and the year we all graduated as well. That’s why I ended up in small animal practice.”
This, combined with chilly minus-six degree Scottish days convinced Dr Christie that a drastic pivot was needed. So, having decided to seek warmer climes in which to practise, she set about obtaining a Skills in Demand visa and embraced a new life in small animal practice in Australia.
The hard yards
In 2001, Dr Christie landed on the NSW Central Coast, spending a few years working at different general veterinary practices before moving to Victoria to join OurVet as a lead vet in a newly opened clinic in Melbourne in 2012.
In 2016, she was named regional manager, working closely with the general manager and CEO. This saw her expand her skills—helping develop clinical standards, lead multiple teams, and contribute to numerous business development plans. In 2021, she became the general manager of network development. She was named senior area manager in 2022, a role that entails overseeing 11 clinics and one that she manages alongside her CVO responsibilities to this day.
While the idea of such a large workload could overwhelm some vets, Dr Christie is unfazed.
A lot of people go into management roles because they don’t want to be clinicians anymore, but she did it because she still loves the practical side of vet work, she says.
“I love going to work every day, but so many vets that I was talking to and was around didn’t. I was given an opportunity to do this position and my drive to do that was because I love going in every day and I wanted to be able to mentor others. How can they run their days more efficiently? How can they better communicate with people? How can they do things so that they also feel fulfilled when they go to work?
“My teams all know that when I walk into a clinic and see animals there, they know I’m interested in talking to them about their cases. It was never about not wanting to do the clinical work; it was always about wanting to support others.”
Reason to smile
While the role has its challenges with workforce shortages and client expectations, what gives Dr Christie real optimism about the future are new graduates.
For several years now she has coordinated the new graduate program and vet student placement process for OurVet. This, she argues, is a particular area of passion as it allows future veterinarians to learn in a supportive environment. This stage is important, she says, because it is when new graduates can be set up either to fail or to thrive.
“We’re often perfectionists; it’s the reason we do what we do, but I would like them to know that it’s okay to not have all the answers. It’s how you approach things when you don’t know and how to navigate that with clients, but also just knowing where to go to find out.
“It’s not just about people having medical knowledge because you can learn all of that at university. There’s so much more to it. How do you navigate situations, how do you communicate with people, how do you approach complex things that might not be out of a textbook and how can you feel comfortable in doing that? I think it’s very important that it’s not just information gleaned from the books, it’s not just learning about diseases.
“There’s a definite science to it, but it is also an art.”
