She's Still in Vet School. She's Already Changing the Profession.

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She has not graduated yet. She has not opened a practice, published a paper, or collected a single credential beyond the ones she is still in the process of earning. And she is already exactly the kind of veterinarian this profession needs more of.

Meet LSU fourth year veterinary student, Courtney Ford-Franklin, a 2026 Vet Candy Rising Star.

She Moves When She Feels Called

There is a particular kind of person who comes through veterinary school and does not wait for the finish line to start doing the work. Courtney is that person. The fourth-year LSU student is still in the thick of clinical rotations, still navigating the relentless pace of senior year, still preparing for the NAVLE. And she is already building something.

Her mission is not complicated, but it is rare. Courtney wants to make veterinary medicine feel less intimidating. Not just to other students, but to the clients sitting across from her in the exam room, the ones who are scared and overwhelmed and trying to understand what is happening to their animal. She wants to be the person who translates the medicine into something human.

"I want to use my knowledge and my voice to make veterinary medicine feel more approachable and easier to understand," she says, "especially for people who may feel overwhelmed by it."

In a profession that has historically rewarded clinical precision above almost everything else, that kind of relational intelligence is easy to overlook. Courtney does not overlook it. She has built her entire professional identity around it.

Discipline, Resilience, Curiosity — In That Order

Ask Courtney how she got here and she does not reach for a dramatic origin story. She gives you three words: discipline, resilience, and curiosity. And she means all three of them specifically.

Discipline is the one she leads with, and that is telling. Not talent. Not passion. Discipline. The thing that keeps you in the library when motivation has completely abandoned you. The thing that gets you through the rotation that is grinding you down. The thing that separates the students who survive vet school from the ones who thrive in it.

Resilience is the second, and for a veterinary student finishing her fourth year, this one is not abstract. Veterinary medicine asks a lot of the people who choose it. The hours are long. The emotional weight is real. The clinical environment can be unforgiving. Resilience in this context is not a buzzword. It is the daily decision to keep going when the path is harder than anyone told you it would be.

But it is the third one, curiosity, that sets Courtney apart. Because curiosity is the quality that keeps a person humble in a profession where ego is easy to develop. She is not afraid to ask questions. She is not afraid to be wrong. She actively seeks out mentorship and treats the gaps in her knowledge as invitations rather than threats. That orientation toward learning, genuine and sustained and self-directed, is rarer than any board score.

The Thriller Reader Who Unwinds With Horror

Here is the thing about the students who are going to change this profession: they are fully human in ways the old model of veterinary excellence never had room for.

Courtney works out because it keeps her grounded during weeks that would otherwise be relentless. She reads thrillers because she likes anything that keeps her fully engaged and on edge. She watches horror movies to unwind, which says something about her specific flavor of intensity and her sense of humor about it. She is a person with a rich interior life, not just a student with a packed schedule.

This matters more than it sounds. The veterinary professional who can sustain a career, who can show up for clients and patients and colleagues over decades without burning out, is almost always the one who figured out how to be a whole person inside a demanding profession. Courtney is already working on that. She does not wait until graduation to build the habits that will carry her through.

The Problem She Is Not Looking Away From

When asked about the biggest challenge facing veterinary medicine today, Courtney does not talk about workforce shortages or corporate consolidation or the debt crisis, even though all of those are real. She talks about burnout. About mental health. About the gap between how rewarding this profession is supposed to feel and how depleting it actually becomes for so many of the people inside it.

"I think it is important that we continue to create more sustainable work environments, improve support systems, and encourage open conversations about well being so that people can continue to thrive in this field," she says.

She is a fourth-year student saying this. Not a burned-out associate three years into her first job. Not a practice owner who has watched too many good clinicians leave. A student who is paying attention right now, in the middle of her training, and naming the thing that the profession has been slow to address.

That kind of awareness before graduation is not common. It suggests someone who arrived at vet school already thinking about the structural realities of the career, not just the clinical ones. Someone who will enter practice with her eyes open.

Move When You Feel Called

The best advice Courtney ever received is the one she lives by: do not wait until you feel 100 percent ready. Move when you feel called.

In a field where impostor syndrome is nearly universal, where the scope of what you do not know becomes more visible the more you learn, where the bar keeps rising the closer you get to it, this advice is genuinely difficult to follow. Most veterinary students spend years waiting to feel ready. Waiting to have enough experience, enough confidence, enough credentials before they raise their hand.

Courtney does not do that. She creates content. She mentors. She engages. She is building a professional identity and a community presence and a philosophy of practice while she is still in the building. Not because she thinks she has it figured out, but because she understands that growth comes from stepping into the opportunity before you feel comfortable inside it.

That is the quality that makes someone a Rising Star. Not the arrival. The willingness to move before you are ready, and to do it with discipline, resilience, and the kind of curiosity that makes people around you want to keep up.

The veterinary profession is going to know Courtney Ford-Franklin's name. It is only a matter of time.

Vet Candy Rising Stars celebrates the veterinary students and early-career professionals who are building the future of the profession right now. To nominate a Rising Star, visit myvetcandy.com/nominate