The Thriving Equine Professional | Career Connections, Equine Industry Resources, Career Advice. · JodiSpeaksLIFE: Speaker, Career Success Coach, Podcaster

79 | A Career Beyond the Barn: Exploring Careers in Equine Research with Jordan Parker

·39 min·2 clips

A rejected vet-school applicant becomes a paid DVM-PhD candidate at Kentucky.

1. The Thriving Equine Professional episode with Jordan Parker centers on equine research, career paths, and veterinary training. 2. Jodi Lynch-Findley interviews Jordan Parker, a DVM-PhD candidate in Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the University of Georgia, and her story matters because she links horse experience to research careers. 3. The episode asks how a horse-crazy student from Marietta, Georgia, turned into a researcher who plans to enter veterinary school later. 4. Jordan says she knew at 11 that she wanted to work with horses after she started riding and built community with other girls in her barn. 5. She says her mother, a small animal exotics veterinarian, helped inspire an early decision to become a veterinarian. 6. Jordan describes riding as a path that taught her to appreciate the full spectrum of horse people, from show riders to students in team programs. 7. She discusses captaining the Culver equestrians, a mounted drill team, during the 27th presidential parade in January 2017. 8. Jordan says her horse, Rochambeau, reacted to a bicyclist on the route because the team had practiced in Indiana, not around bicycle lanes. 9. She explains the IEA as the Interscholastic Equestrian Association and says it helped students who did not own horses still compete. 10. Jordan says her high school and college riding teams taught her to get on many different horses and score for both herself and her team. 11. She says the University of Kentucky tour changed her mind because of the Gluck Equine Research Center and its equine-specific research mission. 12. Jordan says she toured Keeneland, met equine faculty, and decided that Kentucky fit both her interests and her future plans. 13. She describes an undergraduate internship with Dr. Emma Adam that involved organizing a large foal-weight dataset during COVID. 14. Jordan gives a concrete example of a foal born at 60 pounds who later grew to match her peers by 18 months. 15. She says not getting into vet school immediately led Dr. Adam to suggest a paid master's program and later a DVM-PhD route. 16. Jordan says her PhD research focuses on equine stem cell therapies and asks how cells move from the bloodstream to injured tissue. 17. She connects that research to evidence-based medicine, safety, affordability, and whether advanced treatments can work in field settings. 18. The interview style is conversational and encouraging, with Jodi repeating career-advice themes and Jordan answering in detailed, reflective stories. 19. Listeners interested in equine science, vet med, and career pivots will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for a short, purely practical how-to discussion may skip it.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Thriving Equine Professional | Career Connections, Equine Industry Resources, Career Advice.