Career Change

Dr. Elizabeth Wagstrom ('99)
On the day Elizabeth Wagstrom’s son started his freshman year in high school, she was starting her own adventure. “I drove 175 miles down the road to Ames and said, ‘see you guys next weekend,’” she recalled. Wagstrom’s adventure and later-in-life career change was attending veterinary school at Iowa State. Previously she was working in the swine industry at Oxford Laboratories. Only she was in sales, not working directly with pigs. “Working at Oxford Laboratories really gave me a passion for pigs,” Wagstrom said, “and I decided I was on the wrong side of the counter when I went into a veterinary clinic. I thought, ‘I’m on the outside and there are veterinarians on the inside.’ I knew I could do that and I wanted to do that.” After graduating from Iowa State with a DVM in 1999 and a master’s in preventive medicine a year later, Wagstrom spent her new career working at the intersection of animal and public health. “It all fell into place for me,” Wagstrom said, “but it has been a bit of a journey.”