Speaker bio page for Ivan Zakharenkov

Bio

I’m a veterinarian and an entrepreneur leading Galaxy Vets, a veterinary healthcare system co-owned by employees. After 12 years in a variety of veterinary settings from emergency to general practice, I discovered a massive gap in the workflows of almost every veterinary hospital in the world. I created Smart Flow, a first-in-the-industry Workflow Optimization System — subsequently acquired by a Fortune 500 company — to fill this void. After consulting 500+ practices worldwide on workflow optimization, through my experience as a general manager of the Software Division at IDEXX and my subsequent MBA degree, I evolved as an expert on productivity and lean management for large corporate consolidators. My consulting extended to large facilities and organizations such as VCA, Pathway Vet Hospitals, Ethos, Compassion First, MedVet, NVA, VetsNow, NVC, GreenCross, Ontario, Cornell and Atlantic Vet Colleges, Animal Medical Center in New York, Dove Lewis animal hospital and many others. This experience made me realize the market pain points, particularly the lack of a cohesive, unified platform, that would be an end-to-end solution for an efficient M&A and consequent operational excellence and employee satisfaction. This insight, together with my MBA with a specialty in international healthcare management and dissertation focusing on implementation of lean thinking to improve the employee experience, inspired me to launch Veterinary Integration Solutions (VIS), an executive consulting firm where I developed the first Consolidator Operating Platform™ — proprietary methodology and technology for enterprise management and burnout prevention. Pursuing my goal to make a sizable impact on the veterinary industry, I founded Galaxy Vets, a veterinary healthcare system co-owned by its employees and with burnout prevention as a strategic priority. With a mission to give veterinary medicine back to veterinarians, Galaxy Vets allocates equity in the organization to its employees — veterinarians, specialists, technicians, administrative staff, and relief workforce — making them co-owners of and shareholders in the entire network. Along the way, I continue researching the causes of burnout in the veterinary profession and looking for practical solutions through my burnout and work-life balance studies, leadership training, and continuous education in business schools.