Jessica Walters never expected to love the lab — now she runs all four of them
In a small animal clinic in Powhatan, Virginia, a teenage Jessica Walters held an 8-week-old puppy while a veterinarian put it down.
The puppy had a broken leg from jumping off a doghouse with the owner's son. The owner, hearing the cost, opted to euthanize instead.
“It was kind of my opposite of the James Herriot moment,” said Walters, '09, Ph.D. '14, DVM '16. “I knew at that point in time that I couldn’t be a small animal vet, because I have the knowledge and the equipment to help you, and I can’t, because of the money.”
She still wanted to be a veterinarian. She just knew she wanted to be one on a different scale: population health, herd health. A place where the work protected whole operations, whole industries, whole states.
Walters completed her bachelor’s degree at Virginia Tech in 2009 and later, also at Virginia Tech, a Ph.D. in poultry infectious diseases and a DVM. Now, she serves as program manager for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Office of Laboratory Services, overseeing all four veterinary diagnostic laboratories in the Commonwealth.
This year, she is the recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Recent Alumni Award from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.
From beef cattle to poultry
Walters grew up in Powhatan with horses and a small beef cattle operation. She arrived at Virginia Tech planning to become a large-animal cattle veterinarian.
Her first introductory animal science class changed that.
“I took my very first intro to animal science classes, and I decided then and there that I just loved poultry,” Walters said. “I loved being able to look at the populations in poultry and the herd health, the epidemiology of it.”
The pull toward flock-level work kept her at Virginia Tech for a decade. She completed her bachelor’s degree in 2009, pursued a Ph.D. in poultry infectious diseases, then earned a DVM in food-animal medicine. By 2016, she held three Virginia Tech degrees and was working toward board certification in poultry medicine, later earning her diplomate credential from the American College of Poultry Veterinarians.
Her Ph.D. advisor was Bill Pierson, professor emeritus of biosecurity and infection control and a recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Alumni Award. Pierson had to pull her back into the lab.
Dr. Pierson emphasized that he needed Walters back in the lab because she was spending so much time in the field and not in the laboratory setting.
She did not want to be in the lab. She wanted to be in the field, working with commercial poultry operations. The plan was to work for a commercial poultry company first and move into state laboratory work much later in her career.
The cards fell differently. When a position opened as a poultry diagnostician for VDACS in the Shenandoah Valley, Walters took the job. She advanced through two more roles over the years, and now runs the laboratory system she once tried to avoid.
Over the past five years, the laboratory system has grown from a single laboratory being a Level 2 member of the National Animal Health Laboratory Network to all four laboratories being Level 1, comparable with some of the best labs in the country.
Walters has brought in new technology, including a new laboratory information management system to better serve clients and new equipment in all four laboratories to standardize service throughout the Commonwealth. A large expansion of three of the four laboratories is underway to build even more surge capacity and capabilities for testing.
Eight hours
On a Friday night in January 2023, a sample arrived at the Harrisonburg Regional Animal Health Laboratory. The result came back non-negative for highly pathogenic avian influenza. It was the first suspected commercial case in Virginia during what would become the largest avian flu outbreak in U.S. history.
The sample needed to go to Ames, Iowa, for confirmation. Walters was not convinced commercial delivery could get it there fast enough.
She looked up flights from Charlottesville. The next morning at 5 a.m., she boarded a plane with the sample. She flew to Iowa, handed it off at the airport, turned around, and flew home. The confirmatory results came back before she landed in Charlottesville.
“My thought as soon as we saw that non-negative was, we have to act, and we have to act fast,” Walters said. “It was really just because I wanted to protect the industry that I hold dear.”
From initial suspicion to depopulation of the affected flock, the response took approximately eight hours.
In what Walters calls “peacetime,” the Harrisonburg lab averages 150 to 200 samples a week. Once the first detection hit, the lab ran close to 3,000. Routine testing shifted to other state facilities. Employees moved to six-day workweeks. The laboratory director began baking for the staff on her own dime.
“Most people would say, oh my gosh, we’re going to a six-day-a-week work week,” Walters said. “They were all willing to jump in for the protection of Virginia agriculture.”
Virginia’s 2023 response has since been cited by federal and state colleagues as one of the most effectively run in the country.
A people person in a lab
Walters did not expect to find contentment in laboratory management. Before she took the program manager job, a close mentor told her he was not sure she had the backbone to make the decisions the role would require.
“I think it’s the passion for the people that has really kind of encouraged me to grow stronger as a leader,” Walters said.
There is a misconception, she said, that lab people are not “people people.” Walters runs her program the other way. She pulls input from employees, holds group meetings, prioritizes continuing education, and travels to conferences. Her boss prefers the numbers. She handles the people.
“People want to be somewhere where they feel appreciated,” Walters said. “People want to be somewhere where they feel trusted. That’s something that’s really, really important to me.”
Walters’ people-first approach shows in the VDACS externship. She opens her home to visiting students in need of housing. Over the years, she has hosted 20 to 30 students. Many still call her for career advice years after graduation.
“Whether it’s students or employees, my biggest passion with them is being able to see them grow and develop and succeed,” Walters said.
The network
When avian flu hit Virginia in 2023, Walters was not working alone.
Carrie Bissett, a 2004 DVM graduate and director of veterinary services at VDACS, ran the field response. Christina Loiacono, from the class of 1994, coordinates the national laboratory network to which Harrisonburg belongs. Fidelis Hegngi, also from the class of 1994, handles avian flu policy at USDA.
All four trained at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.
“Having two leaders of those programs that have strong ties, work very closely together, I think is very important,” Walters said of her relationship with Bissett. “It was really important for us to be able to work together.”
Every accredited veterinary school teaches from the same textbooks. Every graduate passes the same boards. Asked what makes the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine specifically worth coming back to, Walters did not talk about coursework.
“My answer is going to have nothing to do with the education,” Walters said. “Honestly, I think the secret sauce truly is the people.”
She still calls the professors who taught her. Bob Evans first got her into poultry medicine. He stayed on her Ph.D. committee and helped her navigate her first job. The day she learned about the award, she texted Pierson to ask if he had nominated her. Tanya LeRoith, now director of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital and one of Walters’ former professors, became a model for her as a woman entering leadership in a male-dominated field.
For Walters, it comes back to the people. The professors. The mentors. The classmates. The team.
The first call
When Walters learned she had won the Outstanding Recent Alumni Award, the first call she made was to her husband Mat. He has been with her since undergrad and through every degree, board exam, and career change. The second call was to her parents.
“It’s really great to be able to, you know, they poured a lot into me and invested a lot into me as a kid,” Walters said. “I was the first one to even go to college.”
She said she felt undeserving when she got the call. Several members of the DVM class of 2016 have been recognized with VMCVM alumni awards over the past several years. She sees the award as much as a recognition of her team and her class as of herself.
At home in Rockingham County, Walters lives with her husband and their six-year-old daughter Sara Beth. Their current menagerie includes five dogs, four cats, three horses, two goats, a Scottish Highlander steer, a mini donkey, a mini pony, a turkey, a guinea, 20 chickens, a fish, and a turtle.
For the past two years, Sara Beth has told anyone who asks that she wants to be a veterinarian. She has helped with small necropsies at home and can point out the organs to her father.
Walters tells veterinary students something close to what her own path taught her.
“Don’t close any doors. Keep options open,” Walters said. “I’m a perfect example of this. This is never where I thought I would be, but it’s an area that I truly do find passion in. Keep those doors open, because you never know unless you try new avenues as to where you’ll truly be happy.”
