veterinary business programme
| 7am | Registration opens | Level 3 |
| 8am | Welcome | Rob Mills (NZVA President) | Theatre A Level 5 |
| 8.10am | Plenary: Learning through times of disruption: navigating AI | Sir
Ashley Bloomfield | Theatre A Level 5 |
| 9am | Morning tea | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 9.30am | Safe spaces, brave hearts: unleashing vulnerability in vet practice | Rhonda Andrews Rhonda examines the New Zealand veterinary industry crisis, addressing burnout and mental health challenges. The session emphasises vulnerability as a strength for building trust and communication, debunking myths about weakness. It highlights successful psychological safety strategies, explores the consequences of neglect, and addresses barriers like workplace culture and fear of judgment, offering solutions to foster safer environments. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 10am | Barking up the right tree: getting real about psychological safety | Rhonda Andrews | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 11am | Managing Vet Council complaints | Iain Mclachlan and Liam Shields An outline of the process and principles behind how concerns, complaints, competence and health cases are dealt with by the Vet Council, followed by a discussion of how practices and colleagues can engage with the Vet Council when there are concerns and support colleagues going through the process. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 11.30am | Competition and Markets Authority Investigation: summary and implications for New Zealand | Iain Mclachlan and Seton Butler An overview and discussion of the United Kingdom competition watchdog’s investigation into companion animal vet services, it’s impact in the UK and what it might mean for the veterinary sector in NZ. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 12pm | Lunch | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 1pm | Leading through the flames: responding to burn out in your team | Rhonda Andrews Burn out: Burnout can feel like a confronting topic for leaders, but it’s also a chance to strengthen trust and support your people with confidence. This short, practical session gives leaders a simple framework for what to say, how to respond, and the key steps to take when a team member says they’re burnt out. If you want your leaders to feel steady, clear, and capable in these tough moments, this talk is for you. Practical programs that Barrington Centre developed and delivers such as: SOS (Systems of Support) and Burn out or Just Cooked to address current veterinary issues. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 2pm | Inclusive by design: building veterinary workplaces where everyone belongs | Alex Harrison Veterinary workplaces are often designed around narrow assumptions of who veterinarians are and how they work, creating barriers for colleagues with disabilities, neurodivergence, or different life circumstances. This presentation introduces how inclusive design and accessibility can be embedded into veterinary practice across small animal and equine settings. Drawing on lived experience, accessibility audits, and sector-wide insights, it highlights common systemic barriers and their impacts on wellbeing, retention, and psychosocial safety. Attendees will leave with clearer ways of thinking about accessibility, inclusion, and how small design choices shape disclosure safety, team cohesion, and workforce sustainability. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 2.30pm | Retention through inclusion: keeping vets in the profession | Alex Harrison Veterinary medicine faces an urgent workforce sustainability challenge, with high burnout, attrition, and difficulty retaining staff across Australia and New Zealand. Traditional responses have focused on individual resilience and recruitment incentives, yet many drivers of attrition sit within workplace culture and systems. When colleagues feel unsupported — due to disability, neurodivergence, gender, identity, or working styles outside the “norm” — they are more likely to disengage or leave the profession. This presentation explores how inclusion reframes retention as a systemic opportunity. It contrasts exclusionary structures with inclusive design across recruitment, onboarding, leadership, and career progression, showing how safer, more supportive workplaces improve retention, morale, and long-term workforce sustainability. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 3pm | Afternoon tea | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 3.30pm | Vet business marketing | Sam Bowden | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 4pm | Systemised business - a dream or life-changing reality? Here's how! | Mark Daniels This session will be interactive and give business owners and their teams a step-by-step guide on how to systemize their business. Templates and how-to guides will be described, discussed and available for all attendees free of charge so that they can get started today. Remember 4,000 weeks to live... if you invest some time in 2026, you will have a business model that affords and allows you more freedom and one that will also be more appealing to a future buyer, should you wish to sell. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 5pm | To be confirmed | |
| 5.30pm | Happy hour | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 7pm | NZVA Special Interest Branch Dinners and NZVNA Dinner |
| 7am | Registration opens | Level 3 |
| 8am | Plenary: Thriving and striving at work - the ultimate win win |
Charlotte Cantley | Theatre A Level 5 |
| 8.45am | NZVA AGM | Theatre A Level 5 |
| 9.30am | Morning tea | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 10am | Artificial intelligence - how to embrace it | Brendan Hickman, Ryan Cattin and Seton Butler Shared talk with Companion Animal and Veterinary Nursing - Companion Animal streams | Theatre A Level 5 |
| 12.30pm | Lunch | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 1.30pm | Managing mayhem: coping strategies for the overwhelmed boss | Rhonda Andrews This session gives leaders simple, practical tools to handle burnout and overwhelm—both in themselves and their teams. Leaders learn how to recognise early signs of stress, set healthier workload boundaries, protect recovery time, and create a supportive culture that encourages open conversations about wellbeing. It also builds emotional resilience through habits like gratitude, boundary setting, and knowing when to seek support. Finally, leaders explore ways to reduce daily friction by improving systems and workflows. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 2pm | Stealing secrets: what high performing teams in other industries can teach us! | Rhonda Andrews This session draws on the Barrington Centre’s one day Sustainable Leadership Practices program, designed specifically to support leaders and emergency personnel operating in uncertainty, complexity, and crisis. It strengthens values based leadership by deepening self awareness, clarifying personal beliefs, and building the moral courage needed to stay grounded under pressure. Leaders also develop practical skills in ethical decision making, maintaining calm in ambiguity, and reframing challenging situations into constructive, positive perspectives. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 2.30pm | Disclosure safety: creating a culture of trust in teams | Alex Harrison Veterinary professionals often manage personal challenges such as disability, neurodivergence, mental health concerns, or chronic illness, yet many feel unsafe disclosing these at work. This creates the Disclosure Paradox: staff must speak up to access support, yet speaking up can increase risk, stigma, or career harm. When disclosure feels unsafe, individuals mask their needs, increasing cognitive load and hidden strain, with flow-on effects for wellbeing, team performance, and retention. This presentation explores how veterinary leaders can resolve the Disclosure Paradox by building cultures of trust and psychological safety, arguing that healthy disclosure cultures are central to workforce sustainability and enabling people to thrive. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 3pm | Assistive technology in the clinic: tools that break barriers | Alex Harrison Veterinary clinics already rely on technology, yet many practical assistive tools that ease day-to-day clinical work remain underused. Around 38% of veterinarians in Australia report disability, neurodivergence, or chronic illness, making accessibility a mainstream workforce issue, not a niche one. This presentation highlights clinic-ready technologies such as digital stethoscopes, ergonomic equipment, visual alerts, simple communication apps, and more. Grounded in real-world clinical practice and accessibility problem-solving, it shows how these tools reduce workarounds, mental fatigue, and miscommunication, helping veterinary teams work more safely, clearly, and humanely on the clinic floor. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 3.30pm | Afternoon tea | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 4pm | To be confirmed | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 5.45pm | NZVA Awards | Theatre A Level 5 |
| 6.30pm | Networking dinner | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 7am | Registration opens | Level 3 |
| 8am | Why people leave or stay in the veterinary profession | Lotte Cantley, Rhonda Andrews and Ray Lenaghan | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 10am | Morning tea | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 10.30am | Quit putting band-aids on broken systems: why we keep going around in circles on leadership, culture, and resilience | Jessica Moore-Jones Are we overtraining individuals and under-designing workplaces? When conflict flares, we coach the people. When burnout rises, we teach resilience. When morale dips, we run another workshop. Yet somehow, six months later, the same problem arises in different packaging. This session makes the case that many “people issues” are system issues in disguise. In 25 fast-paced minutes, you’ll learn how to spot the structural patterns driving drama, disengagement, and exhaustion, and where small, strategic shifts can interrupt the cycle. If you’re tired of firefighting, it’s time to rethink the infrastructure. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 11am | Calling out bad behaviours: find the words (and the courage) to deal with gossip, passive aggressiveness, or disrespect in real time, without the drama | Jessica Moore-Jones You hear the sarcasm. You see the eye roll. You know the gossip is spreading. And in the moment, you freeze. Later, you replay what you wish you’d said. Avoiding it fuels the culture. Exploding at it makes things worse. So what actually works? In this practical, fast-paced session, you’ll learn simple, real-time phrases and boundary-setting approaches that stop unhelpful behaviour without shaming, escalating, or turning you into the villain. If you’re tired of walking on eggshells or watching your culture erode around you, it’s time to step in calmly, clearly, and effectively. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 11.30am | Can we move on from imposter syndrome already? What women in vetmed actually need to lead well | Jessica Moore-Jones Imposter syndrome has become the default explanation for why women hesitate in leadership. But what if the discomfort isn’t a flaw, and confidence isn’t the real issue? In a profession dominated by women yet still shaped by outdated leadership models, the barriers are often structural, cultural, and domestic, not psychological. This session explores the double bind, invisible load, and systemic friction that keep the scales imbalanced, and the practical shifts at work (and at home) that make sustainable leadership possible. This is not about fixing women. It’s about redesigning leadership. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 12.30pm | Lunch | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 1.30pm | Make your money work as hard as you do | Naomi Garry Most of us were never taught how to make our money work for us. We know we should be doing something — investing, sorting out KiwiSaver, building toward that next big goal — but life gets in the way. In this practical, interactive session, Naomi draws on her experience leading product and strategy at Sharesies to break down the basics of building wealth in plain language. Whether you're just getting started or looking for a financial tune-up, this is a chance to step back, take stock, and think about what's next for your money. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 2.30pm | Economic outlook | Jarrod Kerr Jarrod will run through the challenges faced by businesses in New Zealand. The main message is: businesses will adapt. The outlook is particularly murky and awkward. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Inflation has peaked and interest rates will eventually fall. | Room 504 Level 5 |
| 3.30pm | Afternoon tea | Exhibition Hall Level 3 |
| 4pm | After hours project - where it has landed | Brendan Hickman Shared talk with Equine stream | Room 504 Level 5 |
| Combined session with another stream. |
This programme was correct at the time of publication. Speakers and titles are subject to change. |