- Welsh farm vet and academic Dr Gwenllian Rees has been elected BVA President for 2026/2027
- Dr Fieke Molenaar MRCVS has been elected Junior Vice President, with outgoing President Dr Rob Williams FRCVS stepping into the Senior Vice President role.
Welsh farm vet and academic Dr Gwenllian Mair Rees BVSc (Hons) PhD FHEA FRSM FRCVS has been elected President of the British Veterinary Association for 2026-2027 at BVA Day in London today.
A 2009 University of Liverpool graduate, Dr Rees worked in farm and equine practice in West Wales and New Zealand before taking up a role as Teaching Fellow in Population Medicine at Bristol Vet School. In 2019, she was awarded a PhD for her research on prescription veterinary medicine use by UK dairy farmers.
Dr Rees, who served as BVA’s Welsh Branch President from 2023 to 2025, is one of the founding academics at Wales’ first School of Veterinary Science, at Aberystwyth University, where she now works as a lecturer. She is well known among the Welsh farming and veterinary community as the project lead for Arwain DGC’s Veterinary Prescribing Champions Network, a Welsh Government-funded national antimicrobial stewardship programme, for which she was recognised with an RCVS Fellowship last year.
Apart from her teaching and antimicrobial stewardship roles, Gwen is also a trustee of the Animal Welfare Foundation and sits on the Welsh Government’s Bovine Tuberculosis Technical Advisory and AMR in Animal Health Delivery groups. She has published extensively and regularly speaks internationally at academic conferences on the subject of antimicrobial stewardship.
In her first speech as President, Dr Rees introduced her presidential theme, ‘A profession prepared and united behind national disease resilience.’
Addressing members, she said:
“We have a significant year ahead. BVA will be helping the profession navigate the implementation of the CMA reforms – making sure that changes work in practice for veterinary teams, clients and, above all, animal health and welfare.
“We will continue the long campaign to reform the Veterinary Surgeons Act. We have made real progress, but we now need to convert that progress into legislation and secure the parliamentary time needed to bring veterinary regulation into the world in which we actually practise.
“And we will have a major focus on disease resilience. That is particularly close to my own heart. My presidential theme is ‘A profession prepared and united behind national disease resilience’. Veterinary medicine has become increasingly specialised, and there is enormous strength in that expertise. But specialisation can also leave us in silos: farm vets, small animal vets, equine vets, government vets, public health vets, researchers, academics and many more. Some challenges simply don’t respect those boundaries. A major animal disease outbreak is one of them.
“If the UK faces the next major notifiable disease emergency, I want us to ask whether we are genuinely ready – not just whether government is ready, or whether our farm veterinary colleagues are ready, but whether we, as a profession, are ready. Do we understand the role we could play? Do we have the right skills and training? Can we mobilise people when they are needed? And can we bring the enormous breadth of expertise across this profession together quickly enough to make a difference?
“That doesn’t mean everybody needs to become an expert in foot-and-mouth disease or avian influenza. It means recognising that we are part of something bigger than our own particular job, practice or species. And that idea reaches beyond disease preparedness.”
Dr Rees added that her theme of a united profession reaches beyond disease preparedness, adding:
“One of the things I most want to champion this year is the idea of one veterinary profession. BVA represents vets working in extraordinary numbers of different ways – in clinical practice, government, academia, research, industry, public health, conservation and veterinary science. I want every one of our members, whatever they do and wherever they work, to feel that their voice has a place here.
“I am also particularly proud to take on this role as a Welsh vet, living and working from Wales while representing colleagues across all four nations of the UK.
“In Wales we say, Gorau chwarae, cyd chwarae — the best play is team play. And that is perhaps the thought I want to carry into this year. We are a diverse profession, but we are stronger when we act together — greater than the sum of our parts.”
Read Dr Rees’ speech in full here.
Outgoing BVA President Dr Rob Williams FRCVS, an experienced small animal vet and qualified HR professional, will step into the role of BVA Senior Vice President. In his speech to members, he highlighted BVA’s lobbying and campaigning work on behalf of members in the past year, from ensuring a more proportionate and fairer outcome for the CMA requirements for both vets and pet owners, to primary legislation for much-needed reform of the Veterinary Surgeons Act. He also mentioned other vital work BVA has done in the past year, including developing a policy and resources around artificial intelligence, supporting students and staff in the face of potential closure of Cambridge Vet School, and successfully lobbying government to protect the supply of veterinary medicines to Northern Ireland.
Dr Fieke Molenaar MSc(WAH) PgC(SAD&OS) DZooMed (mammalian) MRCVS has been elected to the post of Junior Vice President. A University of Ghent and Royal Veterinary College graduate, Fieke has worked across small animal, mixed, wildlife and zoo practice in a career spanning more than 25 years. She is an RCVS Recognised Specialist in Zoo and Wildlife Medicine and past president of the British Veterinary Zoological Society. Fieke currently works as a veterinary dentist with Hampden Veterinary Hospital in Aylesbury, with a clinical focus on dentistry and pain management in all non-domestic species. Outside of practice, she is a trustee of the Southern Thailand Elephant Foundation and the ZEBRA Foundation.
Read Fieke’s speech in full here.
BVA Day is an annual event which includes the election of BVA’s President, Senior Vice President and Junior Vice President and the presentation of two prestigious BVA awards: the BVA Council Impact Award and the Harry Steele-Bodger Scholarship.