New Job, Same Interests
Veterinary school held little interest to Dr. David Gibbs when he was growing up in northeast Iowa on a family dairy farm.
He remembers asking the veterinarians who would treat the family’s dairy cows about vet school. Because of the changing landscape in animal agriculture, those veterinarians were hesitant to encourage Gibbs.
He was still unsure about his career path in community college. For a while he considered becoming a high school science teacher.
Then he asked his cousin for advice. Soon he was at Iowa State on a pre-vet track.
“I would say the moment I knew veterinary medicine would be my career path was when I was accepted to vet school,” Gibbs said. “I knew I had a deep passion for animal agriculture and the people involved in animal agriculture are the salt of the earth.”
“So working with them as a veterinarian seemed like a great option for living in rural Iowa and being part of a great profession.”
Gibbs did just that, joining the Postville Veterinary Clinic after graduating with his DVM. One of the clinic’s veterinarians was his cousin – Dr. Justin Helgerson (’05), the same cousin who gave him advice about vet school.
Gibbs worked as an associate veterinarian at Postville Veterinary Clinic for close to a decade, eventually become a partner at the practice.
“I built up some lifelong relationships with excellent farm clients that will forever be friends of mine,” Gibbs said.
But then his cousin coaxed him into joining his new venture. Helgerson had left Postville Veterinary Clinic to establish Driven Embryo Services.
“The decision to leave was difficult,” Gibbs said, “It was hard to leave the relationships I had built with DVMs, staff and clients.”
“But it was an easy decision from a professional standpoint. The opportunity to specialize in advanced reproduction, which has always been my main interest, and the ability to continue to raise my family in rural Waukon, Iowa, was too good of an opportunity to turn down.”
While at the Postville Veterinary Clinic, Gibbs helped Helgerson doing embryo work, soon becoming proficient in embryo searching, evaluation, transferring, grading, loading and freezing. He spent most of his time at Postville doing pregnancy ultrasounding and fetal sexing.
He has transitioned those knowledge and skills into his new job with Driven Embryo Services.
“The vast majority of the skills I still had and now I’m continuing to build upon them,” Gibbs said. “The work is similar to what I did in private practice, I still get to work with the best people on earth.
“I am very relationship-driven, so it has definitely been fun to get to know a new group of clients.”