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Columbia School of Social Work
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Laurie Maxwell, LCSW (she/her/hers)

Director of Veterinary Social Work
MedVet
Chicago, IL, United States

Laurie combines 20 years of animal welfare, advocacy, and veterinary experience with an MSW from The University of Chicago to create an expertise of issues facing animals and the people who love them. Laurie is the Director of Social Work at MedVet, which provides leading emergency and specialty healthcare for pets with 40+ locations across the country. In her role, Laurie works to build programs that attend to the intersection of veterinary care and social work including direct short-term interventions for pet owners in distress and compassion fatigue prevention for team members. Laurie came to MedVet from PAWS Chicago, the area's largest spay/neuter clinic and no-kill shelter, where she created and ran community outreach programs that brought veterinary care to under-resourced neighborhoods. These programs served over 22,000 pets from 2015 - 2021. One of the programs – a job training program focused on creating workforce opportunities in the veterinary industry for community residents - won the Multicultural Veterinary Medicine Association’s DEI Award in 2021. Prior to PAWS, Laurie spent seven years at The Humane Society of the United States. There she worked on several programs, including legislative efforts and helping to launch Pets for Life, a groundbreaking program focused on providing pet resources to owners in under-served communities nationwide. She also completed her postgraduate certificate in Veterinary Social Work from University of Tennessee in 2022. She received her BA in Public Relations from Pennsylvania State University.

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