Brian Hamm ’25 MBA

Building a network outside your niche 

Brian Hamm made the leap into corporate leadership after spending 18 years as a practicing veterinarian and owner of a successful animal hospital. 

While serving as vice president of medical excellence at Mission Veterinary Partners (MVP), Brian was responsible for setting the medical standards for more than 300 hospitals. He had to quickly shift his thinking from individual patient care to focus on large-scale operational excellence. The transition was both exhilarating and daunting.

Though the role was new to Brian, systems-level thinking was not. Outside of his work with MVP, he was also an entrepreneur, non-profit founder and father of three. “I do crisis management all day long,” he jokes.

The CEO of MVP recommended that Brian consider an Executive MBA as a next step for his career growth. After researching programs, Brian decided to prioritize attending Kellogg.

“One point that really made the difference for me was the team approach in the program,” he says. “That's important to me because everything I do in my business world I'm not doing alone. I'm always working with somebody else, and my success is shared with multiple people.”

Merging Veterinary Work with an MBA 

Though Brian realized that an MBA could be helpful for his work in the veterinary hospital network, as well as his entrepreneurship and non-profit, he was worried that his story might be unclear to the Kellogg Admissions team. “Honestly, I struggled seeing how Kellogg would see value in a veterinarian,” he says. 

He quickly realized in his interview with Director of the Executive MBA Program, Colette Fledges, that he had nothing to worry about. “I felt welcomed even before I knew I got in. They were as interested in me as I was in them. I think that sets you off to a great partnership right from the get-go.”

The connection was clear from his interview and, even once he began the program, his coursework had an immediate impact on his professional life. “When we were in our crisis management course, instead of writing notes, I actually reused the information to write my crisis management guideline for my department,” he says. 

His non-traditional business background has presented Brian with mutual learning opportunities in classroom discussions. He mentions an example from the same crisis management class, “The professor pulled me aside and said, ‘I would love to hear about your industry and how you guys handle crisis management. I would love to find a case study in that area that I could use in future teaching.’ I love the fact that they utilize us as much as we're utilizing them.”

A Transformative Kellogg Experience

As impactful as the classroom learning environment has been, for Brian, the strongest part of the Kellogg experience will remain long after the courses are finished: the community. “I think the way Kellogg selects their candidates sets us up for successful friendships, long-term working relationships and networking,” he reflects. “Their ability to pick the right people that just come together and connect is phenomenal.”

Through the Kellogg network, he has already had a number of opportunities come up that he wasn’t anticipating. "I've had opportunities that I would never have dreamt would have been brought to the table. I truly had very little expectation that Kellogg would be able to help a veterinarian achieve because it's such a niche market. And it's already proven me wrong.”