Anderson: Solicit help from a support network when making a significant career change.

Photo by Kenny Braun

Monday can be a madhouse, says C. Collins (“Andy”) Anderson III (MBA ’85), DVM, Diplomate ACVS. He set a humeral fracture that a pointer incurred while bird hunting, performed a partial tarsal arthrodesis on a cat, and conducted a cerebrospinal fluid analysis on a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, among many other delicate surgical tasks. For Anderson, co–managing partner of South Texas Veterinary Specialists LLP (STVS) in San Antonio, this is all in a day’s work — but it wasn’t always so.

Anderson had pursued a pre-vet course of study at Texas A&M but was lured to the booming oil and gas industry after graduation. He applied to HBS a few years later and went to Wall Street after leaving Soldiers Field. Anderson worked for Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and Goldman Sachs before returning to his native Houston and joining the Sterling Group, a boutique M&A and LBO firm.

“You’re playing the game at a fairly high level, and you have this Harvard MBA, which carries expectations and provides great opportunities,” says Anderson. The compensation wasn’t bad either, he adds. Yet all was not well.

“I found that what I was doing did not match up well with my core, with my soul,” he recalls. “At some level I’d lost my ability to read my moral compass. That created a certain restlessness and discontent with my life.”

With the encouragement of his wife, Kim, and a network of friends from HBS, Anderson crafted a new career path that required a daunting nine years of additional schooling and training to become a board-certified surgeon. “It was difficult, as are most decisions when you make a significant course correction,” he says. “The most important thing I gained from HBS was a set of core friendships. My classmates were totally supportive of the process of moving toward a more centered, authentic path for me.”

Because all of the cases are referred to the STVS by a primary care veterinarian, each poses its own technical challenges. “They come to us because they’re difficult cases,” Anderson explains. “The ones that get into my psyche the most are when it’s clear that a pet is particularly vital to an owner.” For example, a chocolate Lab named Ginger — an important member of a family with seven children — was hit by a car and suffered paralysis. Anderson performed spinal stabilization surgery on the dog and oversaw a physical therapy program that included exercise on an underwater treadmill. After three weeks, Ginger was walking again.

Anderson has a few words of advice for alumni who may be considering a change of careers: “Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. Solicit help from a support network to help you attain some clarity — sometimes what you’re feeling and thinking runs counter to the flow of your life. It can be hard to tune out the noise.”

Anderson says that the business skills he acquired at HBS are becoming increasingly important as the STVS (a 19,000-square-foot hospital with a staff of forty) grows and demands a more sophisticated understanding of finance and managerial issues. “All of the things I turned away from to become skilled as a surgeon are becoming more important,” he observes. “As the world often works, everything is coming full circle.”

— Julia Hanna

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