Dr. Gregory Scott is currently the Senior Associate Veterinarian & Clinical Residency Coordinator at Georgia Aquarium, a Board Certified Specialist in Zoological Medicine, and one of Canopy’s sponsored participants in the 2026 Advancing Minority Leadership in Aquariums & Zoos Program.
Presented by MIAZS in partnership with Leadby, the AMLAZ Program is an 8-month, high-impact program that accelerates the growth of BIPOC, mid-level leaders. Now in its third year, Canopy is proud to continue our annual sponsorship of three participants in the AMLAZ cohort.
We sat down to chat with Greg about his career path, goals for the future, and what he hopes to contribute to the program and the field.
Dr. Gregory Scott
I’d love to hear about your veterinary career path and how you landed at Georgia Aquarium.
Like most veterinarians, my story starts early — though I’ll spare you the “when I was four years old…” version. From the moment I entered vet school, I had one goal: to work with zoo and aquarium animals. The foundations of vet school are dogs, cats, cows, and horses, but I was always aiming for something different. The path wasn’t easy. I did internships, spent about three years in small animal medicine while my wife finished her graduate degree, and then completed a residency and became board certified in zoological medicine. That credential was really the golden ticket. Without it, I saw myself stair-stepping through smaller institutions and moving my family to new cities every few years just to work my way up. I wanted to get to a place where I didn’t have to keep uprooting my family, and Georgia Aquarium — an institution that truly delivers a unique level of guest experience and animal variety — turned out to be that place.
Who inspired you to apply to AMLAZ?
I first met Misha Body (Deputy Zoo Director, Animals & Experiences at the LA Zoo and MIAZS Board Member) in 2016 when I did relief work at the California Science Center, where she was the Director of Husbandry. I saw immediately that she was someone going places — deeply committed to diversity and representation, sharp, and just genuinely good people to be around.We stayed loosely in touch over the years, and interestingly, about six months before she reached out to me about AMLAZ, I had reached out to her. Not about anything specific; just checking in because I was thinking about what the next chapter of my career might look like. Then out of nowhere, she messaged me: “You should apply to AMLAZ.” I felt like the universe had been listening. It was exactly what I’d been searching for without knowing the name for it.
What prompted you to start thinking more specifically about your leadership journey?
I’m curious about many aspects of our field’s work in addition to clinical medicine, and I’m fortunate to be in a place where I can explore different avenues to contribute to the mission of zoos and aquariums. I’ve been overseeing our residency program at Georgia Aquarium for about two years now, and I’ve received some meaningful feedback regarding promising leadership skills that I could further develop. I don’t always know what I’m doing “right,” exactly; I’m kind of operating on instinct. I’ve realized that if I want to still be doing this well in ten years, I need to understand and develop those skills deliberately.
What are you most looking forward to about the AMLAZ Program?
The networking, and I mean that in the most genuine way. There’s a whole universe of people and organizations supporting this field that veterinarians are often just not plugged into. We come in, do our medical thing, and largely stay in our lane. I’m also really looking forward to the structured feedback, especially the 360 assessments. I’ve gotten informal feedback that I’m doing well, but I’ve never had a formal process to identify what’s actually working, what isn’t, and how to grow intentionally. That’s what I’m hoping AMLAZ gives me: a framework, not just an instinct.
What is something unique that you hope to contribute to the cohort?
Learning that I’m the first vet in the program surprised me when I looked through the past participants. And it made me think: This program has been building leaders in the zoo and aquarium field without yet having the perspective of someone on the animal health side. That feels like a gap worth filling. The vet’s-eye view can be pretty insular — I’m focused on my cases, my patients, my department. But our work ripples out constantly. When I say, “This dolphin needs to be isolated for two days,” that affects the whole show schedule. When I say that we need a specialty CT scan across town, that’s not in anyone’s budget or calendar. I don’t always fully appreciate how my decisions land on everyone else, and they don’t always understand what drives mine either. I’m hoping to bring that mutual curiosity into the cohort and to hear perspectives from people whose work has nothing to do with animals at all. That’s a viewpoint I rarely encounter, and I think it’s going to be eye-opening.
Do you have a final project in mind at all yet?
A couple of ideas are percolating. One is launching a formal internship or certificate program with a university’s vet school — bringing vet students to the aquarium for hands-on aquatic health training as part of their coursework. I’ve had early conversations about it, and AMLAZ feels like the opportunity to actually push it forward. I’m staying open to ideas, though. I want to hear more from the program about what makes for a strong project before I commit to a direction.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Learn more about the AMLAZ Program here.
