Few people know the business of veterinary medicine better than John Volk. After growing up on a farm in central Illinois and studying agricultural communications at the University of Illinois, Volk founded The John Volk Company, an advertising and public relations firm focused on agriculture and animal health. Today, Volk is a senior consultant at Brakke Consulting, where he has spent more than three decades helping shape how veterinary professionals understand themselves and the industry around them. He is the principal author of six landmark industry studies, including the Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing Studies and the 2024 AVMA Workforce Study. In 2019, Volk received the VetPartners Pioneer Professional Award for his vision and contributions to the business of veterinary medicine.
1. You’ve accomplished many things in the veterinary profession. What are you doing these days?
Right now, I’m trying to slow down a bit. I’ve been involved in veterinary medicine since the late ’60s, so I’ve had a long career, first in advertising and then in consulting. Currently, I’m doing some work for the American Veterinary Medical Association. I’ve also been involved in the Merck Animal Health Wellbeing Studies, and I’m optimistic that there will be more of those.
2. You’ve taken the business route. Did you ever consider practicing veterinary medicine?
No, but I grew up on a farm and was around many animals. When I was in graduate school at the University of Illinois, I had an appointment as communications director for the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, and I got immersed in veterinary medicine. My college degree was in agricultural communications, so after graduate school, I got a job at an advertising agency. We had an animal health client at the time, Salisbury Laboratories. Then I worked for another agency, which had Elanco Animal Health as a client, and that led to starting my own agency. Since the late ’60s, I’ve been involved in veterinary medicine in one way or another. I owned my agency from ’74 until ’92. I sold it, stayed until 1994, and then left to join Brakke Consulting. So, I’ve always been on the business side.
3. What did growing up on a farm look like?
It was in central Illinois, and we just had an acreage. My dad was a factory worker at Caterpillar Tractor in Peoria, and my mother was a schoolteacher. My sister and I raised Shetland ponies. We also raised rabbits, chickens, guineas, and ducks, which fed the family. We weren’t really full-time farmers, although most of my relatives were. In college, I majored in agricultural communications because I enjoyed writing and didn’t see myself having an opportunity to farm.
4. Were your relatives’ farms also in Illinois?
Yes. My parents both came from large central Illinois families, and both sets of grandparents farmed, as well as some aunts and uncles. So, I was immersed in the farming community from an early age. I also have a sister who’s a veterinarian, and she’s fairly prominent. Her name is Dr. Rhea Morgan, and she’s widely published in veterinary medicine. She’s a veterinary ophthalmologist and board-certified in internal medicine.
5. What were some of your jobs while going through school?
I’m from an era where I was able to work my way through college. I went to the University of Illinois, and at the time, I could work enough to pay my expenses, so I had a number of jobs. I waited tables, made pizzas, and lived and worked in a funeral home for two years, where I got my apartment in exchange for work.
6. Did you imagine doing what you are doing now when you were a little boy?
No, my first career ambition was to be a priest. I was raised Catholic and actually went to the seminary for two-and-a-half years in high school. I decided in my junior year that it wasn’t for me, so I returned home and finished high school. I attended a career day hosted by the University of Illinois College of Agriculture, and they told me about this agricultural communications curriculum. Because I had done some writing for my high school newspaper, that appealed to me, and that kind of helped form my career destination.
7. What are some of the topics you enjoy presenting to the veterinary profession?
I’ve had the good fortune of being involved in a number of major studies in the veterinary profession. The most recent are the Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing studies. In 2017, there was a lot of concern about veterinary mental health, but there was no good data. We’ve now done four studies of veterinary well-being and mental health and two studies of veterinary team well-being and mental health. They’ve been widely published, and I’ve presented on those a number of times. Prior to that, I was the senior investigator on the Bayer Veterinary Care Usage studies. We designed a study looking at why people weren’t bringing their pets into the veterinarian as often as they should.
8. Do you believe the findings resulted in positive outcomes?
Yes, the outcome of those studies resulted in changes to the profession that were very valuable. I believe the Cat Friendly Practice grew from [the studies]. The development of Fear Free was influenced by the Bayer studies. The adoption and popularity of preventive care programs were also influenced by the Bayer Veterinary Care Usage studies. The other thing that’s kind of interesting: I’m a member of ResearchGate, which tracks publications and peer-reviewed journals. The Bayer studies were done from about 2011 to 2013, and I still get notices from ResearchGate at least monthly of citations of those studies. So, they continue to be cited around the world by authors writing about pet care.
9. Do you think we’re moving the needle on well-being and pet care?
Yes, I do. From the Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing studies, Merck has worked at forming an organization called the Wellbeing Collective, where they’ve pulled together experts in well-being that work with practitioners in the United States and Canada. That group meets online every couple of months. The idea is to collectively foster education and counseling on better well-being and mental health among veterinarians. Many people are now utilizing the results of the Merck studies to help their veterinary clients.
10. Do you ever reflect on the successes of your advertising agency?
Yes. We had the opportunity to launch the ivermectin products for Merck Animal Health, which was called MSD AgVet at the time. We launched Heartgard for dogs, Eqvalan for horses, and Ivomec for cattle. We did a lot of work globally for MSD AgVet, and that was a really remarkable opportunity. In the ’80s in the U.S., we did the first direct-to-consumer advertising for a prescription companion animal product with Heartgard and drove that market to several times bigger than it had been in the past.
11. What trends in veterinary medicine do you find most concerning or exciting?
I’m bullish on animal health in general, as the animal health industry and veterinary medicine specifically are involved in essential activities. The world has food animals, and people sometimes forget that food animals represent 50% or more of the animal health industry in terms of pharmaceuticals and vaccines. Obviously, protein is an essential nutrient for humans and animals, so that’s a continuing need. On the companion animal side, pets have become more and more important to people, and I think that’s only going to grow.
12. Any insight into global and U.S. trends?
Globally, we see families getting smaller and economies growing, which means that more people have room in their families for pets. So overall, I think the trends are optimistic for animal health and veterinary services. We also see veterinary services developing in some of the second-tier and third-tier countries, where people have more and more opportunities to have pets. In the U.S., we see growing expenditure on pets. We’re struggling with increased pet care costs, which we see depressing visits. But there’s always something of a rollercoaster effect. I remember back in 2010, 2011, and 2012, when visits were really down, in part due to the Great Recession, and they came back.
13. Do you currently have any pets?
No, we live in downtown Chicago in a townhouse. If we had a big yard, I’d probably have a dog.
14. What do you do for self-care?
My wife and I have a small farm in central Illinois. In the spring, summer, and fall, we spend a lot of weekends there, and there’s always a lot of work to keep that up. We don’t farm it ourselves, but we have trails, gardening, and a zipline. Our grandkids like to spend time there. There’s always a lot of physical work with that, and I try to eat healthy. Living in downtown Chicago, my wife and I walk a lot when we can. I enjoy traveling, and I’ve had an opportunity to see a lot of the world.
John Volk and his wife, Marcia, at a winery in Tuscany. Photo courtesy of John Volk.
15. What are your favorite countries you’ve traveled to?
I’ve never been to a country I didn’t enjoy. In the late ’70s, my wife and I had an opportunity to spend three weeks in China as part of a study group, and it was really before China became open for tourism. It was very eye-opening and just a fascinating trip. In 2011, we went to Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon for a vacation. It was right before Syria blew up — when the Civil War started there — so we were probably some of the last Americans to be in Syria. In 2021, I went to Rwanda and Uganda to see the mountain gorillas. That’s really a lifetime experience when you hack your way through the jungle for an hour and a half and then find yourself in the middle of a gorilla family. They’re right around you — close to you — and they just ignore you, except I had one that was behind me, came through, stepped on my foot, and went down the hill.
16. Do you take photographs while traveling?
Yeah, I’ve got lots of pictures. I haven’t published any gorilla pictures, but I’ve published a number of polar bear pictures over the years as publications have asked me. I had a professional photographer that I worked with on my advertising stuff who had an assignment to photograph polar bears, and he went up to Churchill, Manitoba, which is on Hudson Bay. Each year, he would take a group of friends to photograph polar bears. We’d travel out in a vehicle about 60 miles and camp in a place called Cape Churchill. We’d stay in the vehicles and photograph polar bears for a week or 10 days. I made two trips to visit polar bears, and I’ve got about 4,000 pictures. They are truly remarkable animals.
17. What are some of your other personal interests?
Right now, my wife and I are hooked on a program called “Astrid,” which is a French detective show available on PBS. I like sports. I follow the Chicago Bulls and the University of Illinois. I enjoy music. My wife and I will occasionally go to the Chicago Symphony, because Chicago has a world-class symphony. We also enjoy the Art Institute in Chicago, and when we travel, we try to go to art museums.
18. How do you define leadership?
I think leadership is primarily a function of managing a group of people to work together and accomplish specific goals. Also, helping them identify achievable goals and use their talents to achieve those goals. Leadership is not a democracy, but to the extent possible, you need to help people achieve consensus on how they can individually contribute to a common goal and then help them achieve their own personal objectives in support of that common goal.
19. What advice would you give a younger John?
When I decided at age 16 that I didn’t want to be a priest and started looking for a career, I went into agricultural communications. I studied it in school, and then I segued from one type of work into another with consulting. Even in consulting, I do a lot of writing. So, I think the most important advice is to find something you enjoy doing that contributes to the greater good and then pursue it and try to be the best at it. There are opportunities for everyone, but not everyone is afforded equal opportunity. I have the good fortune of being white and educated in the U.S., and I’ve had a wealth of opportunities. We all need to help everybody have opportunities.
20. Any message you’d like to pass on to the next generation of veterinary professionals?
I’ve often said in lectures at veterinary conferences that clients have very little expertise in judging whether you’re a good doctor or not, but they certainly know whether they’ve been treated well and fairly. So, treating clients well is as important as doing a good job medically for pets, because they’re going to make the decision whether to follow your advice or not.