Dr. Cindy Trice didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a veterinarian. But a winding path through mass communications and a pivotal conversation with a wise friend led her to veterinary school at UC Davis and a career she’s never regretted. Today, the relief veterinarian, serial entrepreneur, cancer survivor, and NAVC board member is channeling decades of hard-won experience into ventures that champion dignity for patients, practitioners, and people navigating some of life’s most difficult moments.
1. What keeps you busy these days?
Right now, I am working some relief, so I’m still involved in clinical practice, doing a little bit of general practice and a little bit of ER. I also serve on the NAVC board, which is amazing and keeps me connected to veterinary medicine in a broader context. Informally, I occasionally advise startups and have other ideas of where I would like to play a role in vet med. So, we’ll see how that unfolds.
2. Was being a veterinarian a dream of yours as a little girl?
No, I was not one of those people. It never occurred to me for one hot second to be a veterinarian, even as a little kid. I wanted to be a ballerina and a rock star at one point.
3. Did you have animals while growing up?
Yeah, we were an animal family. I had mice, gerbils, all the little pocket pet things, and dogs and cats. We had a family veterinarian who I ended up working for later in life when I finally became a veterinarian. Being a veterinarian was a second career for me, and I’m glad that I had another career before vet med because I realized a lot of things.
4. So, did you become a ballerina before becoming a veterinarian?
My first degree was in mass communications. I worked in New York City for a corporate video production company, and then I did freelance production. I worked on movies, TV, commercials, and documentaries. When I look back, I wonder if the freelance production work I did was what laid the groundwork for my preference for relief work.
5. How did your production career segue into animal health?
I ended up living in San Francisco and wasn’t super satisfied with production work. I called a friend, and she asked, “If you could do anything you wanted — don’t think about whether it’s possible or not — what would you do?” And I said, “I would study the relationship between animals and people.”
Then she told me to get a job working with animals. “It doesn’t matter what it is. Just do it,” she said. It was such sage advice, because I was feeling very stuck.
6. What did you do next?
I looked in the want ads — because that’s how you did it in those days — and I found a job as a receptionist at a nearby pet hospital. I applied for that job and had my resume with all this production stuff on it. During the interview, the vet asked, “Why do you want to work at my clinic?” And I said, “Because I want to be a vet.”
I lied to get the job. It just popped out of my mouth.
7. Once you got the job, did you like working in a veterinary environment?
I thought it was so cool. That was when I decided I really did want to be a vet. Then I had to go back and take all the science classes that I had very successfully avoided in my undergraduate years, and it took me three-and-a-half years to get the prerequisites. I worked during the day and went to school at night.
I then went to UC Davis for vet school and graduated in 2004. I haven’t had a moment of regret about being in this special profession.
8. What was your first job as a veterinarian?
After graduation, I found myself back in my hometown of Bradenton, Florida. My very first job as a veterinarian, besides an internship, was with the guy who had been our family vet when I was a kid. He didn’t remember me, but he remembered my parents.
9. Do you have mentors who inspired you along the way?
Absolutely. While I was working at the corporate video production company, our biggest client was PepsiCo. If they came out with a new product, we would make videos to motivate the sales team. It could be really stressful, with creative directors freaking out over every little thing.
I was starting to lose interest in all the drama. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m selling soda.” I just started to have an ethical dilemma and was stressed. I questioned, “Why am I working so hard?”
One producer criticized my work and told me I wasn’t doing a good job, and it was humiliating. But she said, “You’ve got to ask yourself: Do I even care about this?” And when she said that to me, I realized that I didn’t.
That got me thinking that I needed to find something that I cared about. So, vet med really lined up. In my early 20s right out of college, I wasn’t thinking that hard, and she made me think much harder about being a mission-driven person.
10. How did Relief Rover come to be?
Doing relief work, I realized that being a relief vet can be a career. I had this mindset shift where I understood that I was a business-to-business service provider. I had my own practice, but I didn’t have any employees, and I didn’t have much overhead. I was a practice of one, and the clinic was my client. In addition to taking care of patients, I was taking care of a business. So, I wanted to make sure the team had a good day while I was there, and I wanted to make sure the clients were happy, because that’s how I could support this business.
I was traveling, working in multiple states, and using relief as a lifestyle choice. I started looking around and realized that there were no resources out there for veterinarians like me who want to do this. So, I anointed myself the expert and decided to elevate this population of veterinarians and help them understand how to be business-to-business service providers. I started Relief Rover, which is a platform connecting relief vets and relief technicians to practices nationwide and provides a community and resources.
Relief Rover was then bought by Hound, and I worked as Hound’s Chief Veterinary Officer for two years.
At the same time that all that was happening, I had another startup. I would never advise anyone to have two startups at the same time. It was madness, but it just worked out that way. My other startup is called KickIt Recovery Wear, and I launched it a couple of years after I launched Relief Rover.
11. What sparked your idea to create KickIt Recovery Wear?
I had the idea in 2004 after graduating from veterinary school. Just a few months into an internship at Florida Vet Specialists, I was diagnosed with advanced-stage cervical cancer. I ended up dropping out of the internship because I had chemo and radiation — the tumor was too far spread for surgery to be successful.
I had to go to the hospital a lot because they did my chemo in the hospital, and a friend of mine gave me this really cute pair of pajamas to wear in the hospital. I didn’t even know you were allowed to wear your own clothes, but the nurses let me. But the pajamas didn’t have the right functionality for being hooked up to IV lines and all that. And so that was when I had the idea.
But they let me wear them because it was literally game-changing for how I felt. Those hospital gowns are awful. You just feel so undignified and uncomfortable, and preserving mental health as much as you possibly can during something as scary as that is really important. So that was in 2004, and I just kept the idea in my brain.
Dr. Cindy Trice presents her KickIt products to a group of nurse navigators at a large hospital system in North Carolina.
12. How did you move your idea forward?
In 2008, I started working on it, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know anything about clothes or manufacturing. I called a fashion school in Tampa, and the professors helped me make some prototypes and got me started.
I worked on it from 2008 to 2012 by myself, all while being a relief vet. I couldn’t figure out the manufacturing piece. I needed more insider knowledge or connections. So, I threw the idea in the closet.
Fast forward almost a decade. My friend, Beth, whom I had known since the fourth grade, was a business person in Atlanta. She said, “Hey, you know that idea you had? I’ve always loved that idea. And I just met these two women who own a children’s clothing company, and they’re interested in taking on something else.” And then we had the correct expertise together.
I was in the middle of Relief Rover, hustling relief work, and doing that classic entrepreneur thing where I worked until I just literally had to sleep. I was trying to make money and make this thing work. So, I told Beth, “I want this idea to work, but I’m short on time and money.” And she said, “We’ve got you.”
So, we all came together and made it work. I was an idea person for the first few years because I just didn’t have the bandwidth to do much else. These other three women really got things up and launched. Now, I’m so happy to be in a position where I can devote more time to it.
13. How long was your cancer treatment?
I was diagnosed on Aug. 17 and was finished with everything on Oct. 30. I was in the hospital for two weeks for chemo. I had six weeks of external beam radiation and then had three days of internal beam radiation called brachytherapy, which is basically medieval woman torture. It’s awful, but lifesaving, which is important.
I was followed up and given stats for five-year survival. I blew right through that, and now I’m at 22 years. I still see an oncologist, but having a cancer like that, you’re never really done. It changes your body, and there are always complications or aftereffects that you have to deal with.
14. Have you shared your cancer journey with others over the years?
The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have in the beginning, but as a patient advocate, I learned how important it is to tell your story, especially with something like cervical cancer, because it’s one of the cancers with a stigma that people are embarrassed about. If people are quiet, that means they don’t know, or they’re afraid to get their annual testing.
I am a patient advocate for an organization called Cervivor. So, I’m still involved in the cancer community from that perspective because cervical cancer is a cancer that we can literally kick off the planet. That’s why we named our startup KickIt.
The World Health Organization has a goal to kick cervical cancer off the planet by 2030. That’s right around the corner, and there are some countries that have. And so, for KickIt, if you look at our logo, the K is kicking the C, and that is to remind us that we want cancer to be kicked off the planet.
We give back to cancer organizations. We’re a small startup, and although we aren’t going to kick cancer off the planet, that’s our North Star. We’re a for-profit company, but we want to build profits where our give-back is significant, and that’s part of that goal.
15. Were the psychological aspects of your cancer journey as challenging as the physical?
Oh my gosh, yes. I was 34 when I was diagnosed and wondered many times if I was going to be one of those people who didn’t get a full lifespan.
It’s interesting, and I don’t know if this was helpful, hurtful, or neutral for me, but I never had the feeling of “Why me?” I would think, “Well, why not me? I’m no more special than anyone else. If someone else can get cancer and die young, then so can I.”
There was something a little bit freeing about that because I felt like, “Well, I’ve done some cool things in my life. If I’m one of those people who lives a short life, I sure am lucky that I’ve had the one I’ve had because it’s been a good one.”
16. Do you have animals in your life?
I do. I have a very handsome Cardigan corgi. He’s 3 years old, and his name is Louis Gary Trice II White, aka Louie. He’s named after my dad. And I have a mutt dachshund mix named Dennis, aka Denny.
Dr. Cindy Trice and her husband Jimmy with their two dogs, Denny and Louie.
17. What are some things you enjoy doing outside of work?
I’m an avid reader and love reading novels. I’m a super early bird. I get up around five, make a cup of coffee, feed the dogs, and read a book. I usually have Louie in my lap as he’s a cuddle bug. That’s my favorite moment of the day.
I’ve also started taking adult tap classes, which are so fun. I took tap for years as a kid. Dance was my thing when I was young. It’s exercise and joy, and it’s great for your mind. It’s like learning a language. You’ve got to concentrate really hard on what your feet are doing and learning the choreography.
18. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give a younger Cindy?
I would tell younger Cindy, you don’t have to know everything. It’s OK to not know, to be curious, and to ask questions. And don’t worry about what other people think about what you do or don’t know.
19. What is your hope for the veterinary profession, and do you have any advice for the next generation of veterinary professionals?
Don’t be afraid to help shape things. Understand your power. You are the subject matter expert, and so even if other outside forces with different types of education and degrees are coming into the profession, your voice, your experience, and your expertise matter. Don’t be afraid to be a loud voice in how this profession moves forward.
My other piece of advice: Meet as many different people in this profession as you can. Network, network, network. Just know as many people as you can because relationships will give you a rich life. They will give you a rich career, and you never know where they’ll lead.
20. Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I always want to be thought of as someone who is a cheerleader for this profession and so proud to be part of it.
My life has been about dignity in healthcare, whether that’s through KickIt or through being a veterinarian. Being a patient, you understand that when you’re fishing for a vein, it hurts. Once I had so much done to me as a patient, I would marvel at how well our patients put up with some of the stuff we do to them.
There’s such a one-health component of it that goes beyond zoonotic diseases. There’s a lot we can learn and bring to the table based on our experiences as caregivers, patients, and veterinarians. We can all make healthcare experiences more dignified.