Meet Dr. Lesley Steele, the Veterinarian Transforming Animal Care and 2024 RBC Momentum Award Winner

By Khera Alexander

“I always felt that there was a pathway for me, that I could enjoy what I was doing and also have an impact.”

Dr. Lesley Steele, founder and CEO of Steele Veterinary Group, has had a love for animals for as long as she can remember.

Growing up in rural New Brunswick, she spent a lot of time with the animals on her grandmother’s farm.

“I didn’t have a lot of other kids around my age to play with when I was young, and my grandmother had a farm where there were cows and horses,” she says. “I felt that I had a special way with them.”

Ambitious and entrepreneurial, Lesley was always thinking of ways she could generate income to have extra money to spend. From picking strawberries for seniors in the neighbourhood to selling harvested vegetables at a roadside stand, she took an early interest in creating her own opportunities.

“I liked being my own boss, making things more efficient, making things faster, and making sure the customer was happy.”

As a high school student, Lesley knew she wanted control over her life and autonomy over her career, even if she didn’t yet know how she was going to attain it. Seeing her parents work jobs they didn’t enjoy, she didn’t want to find herself in a similar position.

Determined to find a career she could be happy with, Lesley led with her love of animals and became a veterinarian. After veterinary college, her first role was working with large animals, with a specialty in dairy medicine.

Switching over to working with smaller animals and securing a role at a new practice, Lesley learned a lot as a new veterinarian, but one particular business practice didn’t align with her values.

“As one of the newer employees, I had to euthanize all the animals that came in through humane services that had been picked up as strays. They held them for 72 hours, and if somebody didn’t show up to get them, they killed them.”

Alarmed by this policy, Lesley did everything she could to rehome the animals that entered the clinic to prevent them from being unnecessarily euthanized.

“I would pretend that I couldn’t hit a vein, steal [the animal], put it in one of those soft-sided carriers [under my desk], and sneak it out of the building.”

Knowing that she couldn’t continue to take animals from the clinic and secretly rehome them long-term, Lesley felt things could be different if she ran the clinic. Animals could be treated better — and staff could be treated better, too.

“The inappropriate euthanizing of all of those animals was the catalyst that made me dream of having my own place. But mixed in with all of that was the human resources,” she says. “A lot of women work in the veterinary field, and there’s a lot of bullying. I kept looking around, saying, ‘If I owned this place, I would do this differently.’”

Opening her first clinic in 1999, just two years after veterinary school, Lesley’s dive into the deep end of entrepreneurship turned out to be one of the biggest risks she took — and one that paid off.

Today, Steele Veterinary Group is Canada’s largest independently owned group of veterinary hospitals. The company employs more than 150 people and comprises eight hospitals, a telecommunications company and real estate holdings across Atlantic Canada.

In her hospitals, no animals are euthanized out of convenience. Her clinics only put down animals that are sick or extremely behaviourally challenged, a far cry from the clinic she worked at early in her career.

After more than two decades running and building Steele Veterinary Group, Lesley has won many awards for her leadership and business acumen. Having been nominated for an RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Award previously, she never felt ready to apply.

“I’ve been lucky enough to be a private banking client of RBC for over 15 years, and I had been nominated numerous times, but just never felt like I could win,” she says.

When it came time to complete her application for her nomination in the Momentum category, 2024 felt different for Lesley.

“I felt confident enough that it was worth a try.”

With confidence and a strong application on her side, Lesley’s win was thrilling, and incredibly meaningful.

“It’s the largest recognition I’ve ever had in my life. And to know that on a platform where a series of incredible women entrepreneurs were nominated and put themselves out there, I could not believe or even fathom that it was me that was chosen.”

Unable to attend the awards ceremony due to health concerns, Lesley is looking forward to attending future RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards events.

“My goal is to be able to attend this year, even though I won’t be getting an award, because I can’t imagine the buzz that’s actually in the room.”