Debra Vey Voda-Hamilton, JD, Director, President

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Debra Vey Voda-Hamilton is a former government attorney who in the summer of 2008, Debra decided to re-zoom her legal career, this time as a solo practitioner.  She has created her own niche field, employing collaborative law and mediation to address civil conflicts including special education, contract and animal conflicts. Debra has spoken with the American Veterinary Medical Association and their litigators, discussing how employing Alternative Dispute Resolution methodology in animal law conflicts may expedite resolution without the need for litigation.  She is speaking with several animal interest groups to outline for their membership the value of using alternative dispute resolution in solving their own conflicts. Debra leads the Pace Law School-New Direction Re-Entry group Summer 2009, organizing monthly meeting topics and speakers for these returning attorneys.  Follow Debra’s blog on Solo Practice University outlining how you can “Re-Zoom” your legal career after a break in service.  She knows it can be done, she is living proof and would like to share her journey with other Re-Zooming colleagues.

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Kenyon Conklin, VDM, JD,  President-Elect

Dr. Kenyon Conklin is a licensed veterinarian with over 20 years of experience in the private practice, corporate, miltary and research sectors. She provides technical investigations, analysis, reports, and testimony towards the resolution of litigation involving veterinary standards of care, animal bites and injuries to humans, working dogs, horses, animal abuse and neglect, animal behavior, facility design, and safety issues. 

Over the course of her career, Dr. Conklin has practiced in a variety of clinical settings, including small animal general medicine and surgery, and emergency medicine at smaller, independently owned animal hospitals as well as multi-clinic corporate settings. She has deep knowledge and experience in the nuances of veterinary medicine and veterinary hospital operations, from personnel issues and client relations to safety concerns and medical standards of care.

Dr. Conklin also spent six years as a United States Army Veterinary Corps Ocer where she utilized her civilian skills in tactical and research settings. She was selected to serve as the Group Veterinary Surgeon for the 5th Special Forces Group, in Fort Campbell, KY. During her tenure supporting the Special Operations community, Dr. Conklin was responsible for the medical and surgical care of explosives detection and patrol (bite) working dogs. Dr. Conklin also served as a research support veterinarian at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense, the Army’s premiere center for chemical weapons defense testing. She was also certified in the detection of animal diseases of economic and bioterrorism significance at the USDA-APHIS Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostician course. 

Dr. Conklin earned two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in 1998, a B.A. in English Literature and a B.S. in Biology with a minor in Chemistry. She attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and earned her V.M.D. in 2002. She is a member of the American Association of Laboratory Animal Science, the National Association of Federal Veterinarians, and the American Veterinary Medical Law Association.

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Mike Murphy, DVM, JD, PhD,  Secretary/Treasurer

Dr. Murphy most recently a veterinary medical officer with the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration, joined the AVMA in October 2019 as director of the Division of Animal and Public Health. The division is within the AVMA’s Public Policy Strategic Business Unit, which also encompasses the Animal Welfare Division and global outreach. As head of the DAPH, Dr. Murphy provides the vision, expertise, and leadership required to plan, develop, implement, and manage Association activities supported by the division. Dr. Murphy comes to the AVMA after a decade with the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine. He served in the Office of the Director since 2015 helping to handle a variety of issues such as the veterinary feed directive. During his FDA tenure, Dr. Murphy was the agency’s representative to the AVMA’s task forces on the model veterinary practice act and antimicrobial stewardship in companion animal practice. He also was a member of the AVMA Judicial Council and the Association’s committees on antimicrobials and veterinary specialty organizations. Prior to joining the FDA, Dr. Murphy was a professor at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine. He joined the faculty in 1987 to coordinate the veterinary college’s toxicology program, provide diagnostic services, and teach veterinary and graduate students about toxicology. He retired from the university in 2009 as professor emeritus. Dr. Murphy is a 1981 graduate of the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. He has a doctoral degree in toxicology as well as a law degree, Dr. Murphy received his J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN, in 1999. Dr. Murphy is a diplomate of both the American Board of Veterinary Toxicology and American Board of Toxicology.

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Marty Greer, DVM, ​District I

District I:  AL, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, KY, MA, MD, ME, NC, NH, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, VT, WV, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Quebec

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Dr. Greer received her Bachelor of Science in 1978 and my DVM in 1981 from Iowa State University in Ames Iowa. In 1982  she established the Brownsville Small Animal Clinic in Dr. Griffith’s practice building and in 1988, moved the practice to Lomira.  Dr. Greer has a special interest in Pediatrics and Reproduction. In 2002,  she opened a Canine Semen Freezing Center, International Canine Semen Bank – Wisconsin (ICSB-WI) and became Penn-Hip Certified.On my first attempt at using extended semen, she bred the practice’s first litter of pups from frozen semen in 1998. The advent of in-house quantitative progesterone testing has made this process much more successful. Dr. Greer has also been featured in articles in Veterinary Economics. In 2010, she graduated from Marquette Law School. She practices law part-time with my law partner, Attorney Sheila Kessler, at Animal Legal Resources LLC.  In 2005, Marty was appointed by Governor Jim Doyle to a position on the Veterinary Examining Board of the Department of Safety and Professional Services, where she served for 8 years.  Dr. Greer is active in the community as a member of the AVMA, NEWVMA, ASVBP, APDT, AAFP, SVME, ACSMA, The Society for Theriogenology, the Fond du Lac Kennel Club, The Kettle Moraine Kennel Club, the Pembroke Welsh Corgi Club of America, Lakeshore Pembroke Welsh Corgi Kennel Club, and the Lomira Area Chamber of Commerce. She also is on the Board of Directors for the Society for Veterinary Medical Ethics, American Veterinary Medical Law Association, and the Society for Theriogenology. Dr. Greer is also on the Animal Welfare Committee and Education Committee for the Wisconsin Veterinary Medical Association and she is the president of the National Animal Interest Alliance. www.naiaonline-org.

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Lance Roasa, DVM, MS, JD, District III

District III: AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NM, NV, OR, TX, UT, WA, WY, Yukon Territory, Saskatchewan

Dr. Lance Roasa was raised on a farm and ranch in Central Texas. He attended Texas A&M University where he earned a Bachelors degree in Biomedical Sciences, a Masters degree in Veterinary Physiology and a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine. He has practiced in Arizona and has owned a private practice in Colorado. He and his family moved to Lincoln in 2013. He enjoys veterinary emergency practice, dentistry, and surgery. In his free time, Dr. Roasa enjoys spending time with his wife and 2 sons, Ian and Sterling and their dogs Milo and CR and cat Simon.

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John Scott, DVM, JD,  At-Large Director

Dr. John Scott holds the DVM degree from Oklahoma State University and the JD degree from the University of Houston and has been continuously licensed in Texas to practice veterinary medicine since 1971 and law since 1993.  He currently practices clinical veterinary medicine on a part-time basis 3.5 days per week in the Dallas area.  He has presented programs at AVMA, AAHA, and AVMLA, as well as numerous state and local meetings.  He has previously served the AVMLA as a Director for 10 of the first 15 years of the existence of the AVMLA and served as President in 2010.

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Beverly Jones, JD,  At-Large Director
District II:  AR, KS, IA, IL, IN, LA, MI, MN, MO, MS, ND, NE, OK, SD, WI
 

Beverly Jones is the Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), where she provides broad-based legal support and expertise to a wide range of programmatic and infrastructure groups on areas as diverse as contracts, intellectual property, employment, defensive litigation, lobbying and political activity, tax, and animal welfare law. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Immunology & Laboratory Medicine at the University of Florida, where she teaches a course in Animal Law to veterinarians and forensic veterinary scientists. Prior to joining the ASPCA in 2009, Beverly served as Associate General Counsel at the Vera Institute of Justice, and as an associate in the Tax Exempt Organizations practice group of Preston Gates and Ellis, LLC in Seattle (now part of K&L Gates). Beverly earned her A.B. in government from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and a J.D. from Yale Law School. After law school, Beverly clerked for the Honorable Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz of the New Jersey Supreme Court, and subsequently served as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellow in Nonprofit Law through the NYU Center on Philanthropy and the Law.

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At-Large Director

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Donna C. Kline, JD., Ph.D. Past President

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Dr. Donna C. Kline graduated from Harvard Law School with honors. She successfully practiced trial law for twenty years. She received her doctorate in philosophy from The Ohio State University and completed a four-year postdoctoral course in psychoanalysis at the Houston Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute. She has taught at the University of Texas and the University of Houston. She studied in the graduate program in creative writing at the University of Houston. Her first book, Dominion and Wealth, is an academic philosophy book published by Dordrecht-Reidel (now Springer). She has presented many papers on bioethics, law, and psychoanalysis at national and international conferences. Members of the Houston Art League praised her popular lecture, Van Gogh and His Doctors, about artists and their therapists, as the best lecture of the year. She has reviewed books on psychology and law for the Houston Chronicle. The American Psychoanalytic Association awarded her the Karl Menninger Prize for one of her papers

 

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