Jonna Mazet

A visionary leader, Jonna Mazet, DVM, MPVM, PhD, is globally renowned for her work in emerging zoonotic disease surveillance and is a champion of the One Health approach. Remarkable in her ability to envision and lead large-scale projects that span diverse stakeholders, at her heart, Jonna is a wildlife veterinarian who loves her family, the outdoors, and is always up for a camping adventure. Guided by a conservation ethos and a desire to address our planet’s most pressing issues (be it biodiversity loss, climate change, or deeply rooted health inequities), Jonna finds job satisfaction in training the next generation of professionals to be leaders in their fields. Whether in the classroom, chairing a conference session, or sampling a giraffe with a mystery disease, Jonna has the gift of adding humor and perspective to any situation. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Jonna is a fierce advocate for veterinary medicine, wildlife and biodiversity conservation, women in science, and the One Health approach at a national and international level. Given wisdom and perspective early on in her career by motherhood, Jonna cites her family life as the gift that helped her to prioritize and maintain work-life balance. Now the Vice Provost for Grand Challenges at UC Davis, Jonna is bringing together the amazing power of the disciplines on the diverse campus to address a portfolio of ambitious initiatives oriented around finding solutions for health and disease challenges, climate change, environmental degradation, drought, wildfires, and food systems. We were so grateful to spend some time chatting with Jonna and learning about what motivates and inspires her.

Veterinary School & Year Graduated: University of California Davis, 1992

Additional Degrees: MPVM, UC Davis, 1992; PhD in Epidemiology, UC Davis, 1996

Questions and Answers

Tell me about your most challenging and rewarding veterinary jobs or work experiences.
The most challenging time has to be right now. There have been lots of challenges. My current trials are more dramatic and political than ever before. They seem to cycle and come back around even when you think that you've overcome them. It's devastating to see that you've worked hard on something, like pandemic prevention, and are trying to contribute and make a difference on something as important as this devastating disease that touches everyone. I've always worked in tragedy and disaster response, and it has always been devastating, but It has never been this hard because I've never faced such politically-motivated obstacles. Usually when tragedy strikes, people acknowledge that it is a horrible situation and at least want to work together for recovery.

An expected and experienced challenge stems from sometimes being less-respected than my colleagues because I was perceived as a young woman, even as I've aged. That said, the vast majority of my work experiences as a veterinarian have been wonderful and amazing. The most personally rewarding aspect of my work has been providing mentorship through Envirovet, Rx One Health, and my graduate students. With the Envirovet and Rx One Health students, you can see an intensive effort bearing fruit in a very short time and then the impact perpetuating throughout the careers of the trainees.
What did you love about the position or experience?
I love problem solving, especially in times of crisis. Our veterinary training has taught us to be systems thinkers, which makes us very valuable in crisis situations because we can break things down into their parts, while recognizing the important interconnections. We’re also trained in vet school to stay calm in emergency situations. Whether I needed the veterinary degree or not for some of the jobs that I have held, that training has served me incredibly well. I’ve loved being able to help and save lives during oil spills and make a difference. In a more holistic look at my career, I've loved the contributions to training of individuals who have gone on and done wonderful things themselves and trained others. Paying it forward has been incredibly rewarding. Hearing about and seeing what others are doing with their veterinary training, and having been a small part of it, is such an honor. Students I have worked with have gone on to do amazing things. They’re working on policy and are creating huge impacts. Some of them have even become parliamentarians in their countries. Others have become heads of their own practices and also head veterinarians for national parks systems, zoos, and states. They have made their communities better clinically and through research, but also by populating the highest levels of academia, governments, and private sector institutes.
Tell me about your journey to get to that point in your life.
I learned through my journey that planning is important, but you also need flexibility. When I was younger I made really clear plans of where I wanted to go and how I would get there. Those plans helped me to be successful, but they also made it harder in ways. I would be disappointed in myself when I wasn’t on the right trajectory. I think that I also missed out on opportunities because I wasn't as open to making changes in my plan. Luckily for me, fairly early in my career, I had some life experiences that made me realize the value in taking on opportunities that can first appear as challenges. When I was in high school, I made a plan to go to veterinary school and get an advanced degree. I can't tell you why that was my plan. I worked in small animal clinics to get veterinary hours, but I didn't love it. I loved animals and wanted to make a contribution to the world through working with animals. In undergrad I was working with wildlife, but I wasn't aware of good jobs in wildlife medicine. There weren't many people fully employed as wildlife veterinarians back then. I thought the best path would be to become trained as a zoo vet. I made a strong play to try and work towards that, because I thought that was the right way to build a career working with wildlife.

During vet school, I found that I didn't really connect with many zoological institutions’ missions, and my planned trajectory did not appeal to me as much anymore. Luckily, I met the right people during vet school and realized there were other opportunities, like academia or working for a governmental agency. I decided an MPVM would be a good fit for me, and I started doing research and really enjoyed it. I only went to undergrad for three years because I figured out how to apply to vet school early. I started vet school when I was 20 and started my MPVM research while I was still in vet school classes. While I was still working on my MPVM, my research mentor talked me into getting a PhD. I really had to convince myself to pursue the PhD because I felt that I had already been in school for so long. I had to tell myself that I was taking a job (as a grad student) with a prize at the end – a PhD.

I felt pressure from my family to start working, and some had a hard time understanding why I was still in school, as neither of my parents graduated from college and some grandparents hadn’t finished high school. I also got married and had two babies in the middle of that. I was moving forward at a pace that was not really realistic or reasonable for anyone, including myself. I found that I loved being a graduate student and working on my PhD; that was the best job I ever had, to be honest. My PhD took me about three years. It was very freeing. I just had to think and focus on one thing, and I got to make my own schedule. It sparked my love for academia as well. You have so much freedom, as long as you are productive, which worked very well for my personality type. I strategically chose a research topic that I thought would be marketable for working with wildlife after completion. I studied the effects of oil on wildlife, and I found funding so that I could easily approach potential faculty mentors without asking them to take much of a risk on me. When a job came up with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, I applied before finishing my dissertation. I got the job, in part, because I was the only applicant who had advanced training in oil spills. That was a bit lucky, but mostly by design.

That job was my first experience of people targeting me for my professional pursuits. There were a lot of people in conservation that thought responding to oil spills was a big waste of time and money. They wanted to focus on protecting natural spaces and resources, rather than response. I had people writing letters trying to get me fired, which has unfortunately continued throughout my career because I can be a vocal advocate. I went to work for the Department of Fish and Wildlife with enemies within the agency. I had to find other allies, and academia became a big one right away, as did other conservation groups. I learned very quickly to be participatory and think about everybody's needs. I was working on problem solving collaboratively from the beginning because I needed to survive. That, combined with my UC Davis training, started my enthusiasm for what would become the One Health approach.

The thing I didn't like about working in government was the hierarchical structure, and I didn’t do well with that. I wanted to find a way to contribute to similar problems, but also have more flexibility. My mentor at Fish and Wildlife told me that I was going to keep advancing and would have to take on more of a managerial role. He told me that if I wanted to keep doing hands-on work with wildlife problems that moving my position to UC Davis might be possible, which was amazing for me. After I started working at Davis, I threw my hat in the ring, at the encouragement of the dean, to help develop the Wildlife Health Center from a loosely associated group of faculty to an actual functioning entity. At that time, it was unheard of for an assistant professor to become a center director. That’s not the case anymore, which I am very happy to report. Walter Boyce and I were able to join forces and became co-directors of the Wildlife Health Center.

I loved being a junior academic and being my own boss. I had the freedom to pursue the issues and the problems I wanted to pursue. I had the ability to collaborate and be connected with amazing and thoughtful people, all grounded in problem solving. It was the perfect fit for me. Within the university, I was able to find different projects to work on and help with that I couldn't have anticipated. We were able to get the Wildlife Health Center to be more flexible and service-oriented than university bureaucracy often allows. I learned that there are always ways to improve yourself and to make the systems work better for optimal health. That can apply to your patients, your community, and the world. That's what I have been trying to do throughout my career, and I love it. Moving forward, I'm trying to be flexible and trying not to plan every step. My work right now allows me to harness the amazing power of UC Davis to tackle some of the world’s most wicked problems, while also influencing the training of the next generation of problem-solving leaders, including veterinarians.
As a veterinary student, did you ever imagine yourself taking this journey and having these professional experiences?
No, of course not. That's what I mean about being flexible. I never saw my career ending up how it has. I try to think in terms of what needs help and whether I have any skills to contribute, then I go for it.
In retrospect, what do you wish you’d known as a veterinary student or early in your career?
I wish I knew that how you view yourself and your loved ones is the most important thing to consider when making choices in life. I had the benefit of doing a lot of my training and having formative life choices happen in a time without social media. I know that social media can be amazing, and I love being connected to people I care about that are far away. But it’s tragic what it can do to people's confidence.
Would you have changed anything about your time in veterinary school?
I rushed all of my educational pursuits. I was rushing to achieve a long term goal and not enjoying the process and wasn’t always fully engaged. I was more fixated about what I needed to get done, rather than getting the most out of the learning experience. I wish I had stayed longer during undergrad and taken more language and art classes. I wish that I didn't have to work so much in veterinary school, but I needed the money. It would have been nice to spend a couple of extra years in my graduate program. With that being said, I know myself and understand my personality, and I bet if I went back I would do the exact same thing.
Would you have changed anything about your time since graduating veterinary school?
I probably would have worried less about the people writing bad letters about me. I [think] I worried less than most people would, just because of my make-up and support structures. I've always had really amazing confidence-building supporters in my family, especially my husband. He keeps me very grounded and reminds me that I shouldn’t care what others think. My family helps me keep my professional value separate from my self-worth.
Did you have any mentors or role models along the way that helped or inspired you? Please provide an example of how they helped you or what qualities they had that made them a good mentor? How did you find them?
I had many. Pat Conrad was especially helpful to me as an academic woman and mother. Early in your career, people often try to recruit you to their points of view, which are not always ethical. She was a guiding star for me in that realm. I have had a lot of wonderful role models, including Ian Gardner and David Jessup. It took me a while to appreciate that no matter how amazing role models might be, they are still just people with challenges and flaws. You have to look at people as human beings and not as icons. I learned that lesson early in my life. It allowed me to recognize and learn the best things from people and leave the rest behind. I found mentors by seeking them out if I had a specific question and seeing if they were interested in talking to me. I also was open to them seeking me out. A lot of my mentors were people that I interacted with and found interesting. Also, your mentors don't have to be someone senior to you in your field. Your mentors can be anyone. I've learned so much from people at all stages of their careers. I consider my students as mentors in my path, and I have learned so much from interaction with them. You can learn an incredible amount from people that are in different careers and stages of life.
Tell me about any pivotal moments or key turning points that shaped your career.
I had babies. I had my first child when I was 24 and that made me learn how to be flexible. If I hadn't had her, I would be in a very different situation. I would have been a much less well-rounded and happy person. It helped me to recognize that I need people and people need me and to not work so hard all the time.
Tell me about one or two challenges, setbacks or obstacles that you faced along the way on your professional journey. How did you address those?
I've had a lot of personal and family member health challenges. Some of those challenges have probably made me miss some opportunities, but they have also made me aware of my ability to overcome disease and stay positive when people in my family have been faced with life-threatening illnesses. You can choose to embrace what comes and move forward. Facing serious health challenges encourages you to live for today, and that has been an amazing lesson. Professionally, there have been a lot of challenges like being dismissed and disrespected for being junior or female. I learned how to deal with that early on by laughing. I can recognize it as someone else's problem when they behave like that. It's very disarming when someone is screaming at you right in the face and trying to tear you down and you just start laughing. I’m not saying that’s the most professional approach, it just happened to work well for me in my time.
What was the most important lesson you learned as a veterinarian, and still remember today, and would want to tell vet students about?
Trust yourself and believe in yourself. Surround yourself with people who love and respect you, and you'll make good choices.
What’s been the biggest highlight of your career so far?
I've had a lot of honors and people have been very generous with me. I've been given honors that I didn't know existed, let alone that I [thought I] could be qualified to achieve. More important for me is seeing the impacts of collaborative work on communities. I love hearing the stories from our teams about helping communities recover from disease outbreaks and start the healing process and work to protect themselves. Standing up for other researchers, especially in this pandemic, is another thing that I will remember.