LeBlanc, Pat, - Cohort 2008

Michigan State University

Training to become the current Director of the Michigan State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital began for Dr. Pat LeBlanc during his years as a cheerleader for the Michigan State University Football and Basketball teams. Firing up crowds for sport teams that were not always winning has a lot in common with boosting morale in an organization.

Dr. LeBlanc received his DVM from Michigan State in 1982 and completed a residency in anesthesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986. During the years of 1986 to 1994, Dr. LeBlanc was a board-certified, tenured anesthesia faculty member at Michigan State University. In 1994, he made the difficult decision to answer his father’s call to take over the reins of a family-owned international petroleum equipment manufacturing company. The company’s products were sold through a network of over 1,000 distributors. Dr. LeBlanc draws parallels between marketing his company’s products to distributors and marketing the VTH to referring veterinary clinics. He also led his company through an industry-wide economic downturn, a situation similar to what many veterinarians are currently experiencing.

In 2001, the business was sold and in 2003 Dr. LeBlanc returned to Michigan State University to become Hospital Director. Despite the seemingly unrelated nature of his business experience to that of the veterinary profession, enough parallels are present to have served him well. Of course, the part about being a cheerleader hasn’t hurt either.