“One of the lessons I’ve learned looking back on my career is that there’s only so much you can plan for. I’m someone who tries to control things for myself and prefers to clearly map out my path, but I’ve realized over the years that sometimes you just have to go with the flow a bit. Try your best to create opportunities for yourself that seem worthwhile, but accept that there are factors you can’t control.”
Jaipal Gill is currently Program Director at Welfare Matters, where (among other things) he works with the team to run an incubation program launching new farmed animal welfare organizations.
Jaipal’s career has taken many turns. He started by investigating animal cruelty for SPCA Singapore, then earned a veterinary degree. After this, he returned to the SPCA as Executive Director, and even participated in a nonprofit incubator himself before taking his role at Welfare Matters.
We recently spoke with Jaipal about his career journey so far. We covered how having a wide range of experiences can help you throughout your career, what his current role looks like, as well as his thoughts on how veterinarians can get involved in animal welfare. This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Before studying veterinary medicine, you completed another degree and worked in an animal welfare job. Could you tell us about your journey up to that point?
I’ve had a very windy journey. I remember in vet school, I was one of the oldest students in my cohort because I had worked for a number of years before. My undergraduate was in life sciences, and at that point, graduate school wasn’t even on my mind—I just wanted to work. I always knew I wanted to do something in the space of ‘doing good’, though I wasn’t exactly sure what that would look like.
I think sometimes you need a bit of luck and timing. Right when I graduated from undergrad, SPCA Singapore was hiring for an inspector, and I was lucky enough to get that job. That was the beginning of my animal welfare career and I ended up spending nearly a decade doing animal welfare work in Singapore, all starting from that one opportunity.
This was way before studying veterinary medicine. I finished undergrad, got this job, and the work was basically investigating and managing cruelty and welfare cases that people reported to us. We ran an inspectorate where people would report neglect or cruelty, and then we’d investigate and try to help that individual animal.
It was intense from day one. Literally on my first day, I received a death threat from someone who wasn’t happy we were investigating an alleged neglect case involving his cats. As a young person fresh out of school with this vague concept of wanting to do good and help animals, I was suddenly seeing animal suffering on a regular basis. Some cases I could actually do something about, which helped from a personal management perspective. But there were many situations where despite your best efforts, you just couldn’t do anything.
Looking back now—this was in 2008—I only did it for a year, but the lessons from that role have stuck with me through everything else I’ve done. Doing that groundwork, trying to understand human behaviour, witnessing suffering, finding ways to alleviate it, failing many times, managing the personal emotional toll, those are lessons I’ll carry with me forever.
As you’ll hear more about my journey, I’ve done a bunch of different things. But every experience I think has added some value to the work I do today.
I’m curious about your transition after graduating from veterinary medicine. How did you approach it?
When I was graduating from vet school, I was in my 30s and had already worked at SPCA Singapore in two different roles—first as an inspector, then as assistant manager of operations, helping run the organization’s animal welfare services: animal rescue, inspectorate, veterinary clinic, shelter, and adoptions.
During vet school, you have mandatory placements, you have to spend time in specific areas of practice, but there are also elective weeks where you can choose what you want to do. I found myself doing a lot of animal welfare placements during those elective periods, exploring different types of work. I knew going in that once I finished vet school, I wanted to do some form of animal welfare work, though I wasn’t sure exactly what. The possibilities ranged from research to shelter or community medicine to laboratory animal medicine to policy work with an NGO or in government.
I kept an open mind throughout vet school, using my placements to explore different paths. I did placements in laboratories where animals were used for research, at shelters and rescue organizations, and even with World Animal Protection to see what international work looked like.
As I was finishing vet school, I was still keeping my options open. I was really keen on practicing in a shelter or community clinic, serving animals who wouldn’t otherwise have access to veterinary care. But around that time, the opportunity came up to return to SPCA Singapore as Executive Director. And again, speaking about luck and timing in career decisions—sometimes there’s only so much you can plan for.
Because I had worked there before, I was familiar with the organization. I really believed in its work and saw the potential to do some good in that role. So I took it. And my passion for access to veterinary care actually came full circle—one of the major projects I worked on as ED was helping develop a community clinic that provided affordable vet care to animals who needed it.
Was the managerial, strategic kind of work something you knew you wanted to pursue?
Being the head of an organization was never my target. Through paid work and volunteering over the years, I had developed some leadership and management skills and usually found myself enjoying that kind of work. I’m energized by trying to fulfill a vision, starting up new and challenging projects, working with different people, and trying to bring out the best in them and myself.
So while I wasn’t aiming for a senior leadership role right out of vet school, I think it was again about taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. I knew I would enjoy many aspects of the job (and hopefully be good at them too!). I saw it as a chance to maximize the impact I could have at that stage in my career, and it really leveraged a lot of my past experiences and knowledge in animal welfare. A lot of things were adding up and pointing in that direction, so I went for it.
After your time at SPCA Singapore, you entered the Charity Entrepreneurship incubation program. How did that come about?
Some factors came into play that weren’t part of traditional career planning; my spouse received a job offer in the US. This was around my sixth year as Executive Director. If it had been earlier, I wouldn’t have been ready to leave the role and the organization, but by that point I felt like I’d accomplished some of the major projects I’d set out to do. I also felt maybe it was time for someone else who could do a better job than me to come in and take the organization to the next level, and for me to explore my next challenge. So we packed up and moved to the US in 2022.
I started thinking about what I could do next and how I could leverage my background. The Charity Entrepreneurship incubation program appealed to me because it was a way to work in animal welfare again while creating something new that could add impact. During the program, I worked on plans for a fish welfare organization, but I didn’t end up starting it because it would have required significant travel, which wasn’t feasible for me at that point in my life.
So I was back to figuring out what to do next. One of the lessons I’ve learned looking back on my career is that there’s only so much you can plan for. I’m someone who tries to control things for myself and prefers to clearly map out my path, but I’ve realized over the years that sometimes you just have to go with the flow a bit. Try your best to create opportunities for yourself that seem worthwhile, but accept that there are factors you can’t control.
Then a really interesting opportunity came up. I came across Welfare Matters, an organization in Southeast Asia that was about to launch an incubation program specifically focused on farmed animals in the region. Again, a lot of things were adding up—my passion for the cause, past experiences, and knowledge aligned. And since I couldn’t start something new myself at that time, I felt that the next best thing was to help others do it.
So I joined the organization and helped with the incubation program, and we ended up starting two farmed animal welfare organizations—both focusing on duck welfare, one based in Indonesia and the other in Vietnam. That was really exciting.
We have also been exploring a new program around animal welfare training for veterinarians in Southeast Asia who work with farmed animals. It’s a natural extension that brings together the veterinary and animal welfare aspects of my background with the capacity-building work we are doing in the region.
What does your day-to-day work at Welfare Matters look like?
That changes depending on which phase of a program we’re in. When I first joined the organization, most of the work was focused on program development—designing and planning the curriculum and all the details of the program. We also spent time finding the best talent in the region to bring in; advocates who had the potential to start their own organizations.
Then there was the incubation program itself, which looked very different from the development phase. That was an intensive period with long days supporting the incubatees as they researched, designed, and planned for their new organizations. The incubatees and my team and I also spent two weeks in Vietnam for the in-person portion of the program.
After the incubation program wrapped up, the day-to-day changed again. Some time was spent supporting the newly launched organizations, and the rest went to strategic planning, developing new programs, fundraising, and other management work. We’ve also started work on the next incubation program, which is targeted for 2026.
In your current work, you focus on the welfare of farmed animals. How did you come to care about farmed animal welfare?
I had always been interested in the welfare of farmed animals, so it wasn’t something new for me. Actually, my first experience with animal welfare was volunteering as a teenager, doing outreach for Vegetarian Society Singapore.
I’m passionate about the well-being of all sentient beings and am happy to work in any area I feel I can make a difference with my background and skills. When I started my animal welfare journey, I wanted to do something that could impact as many animals as possible. Back then, there were far fewer opportunities in farmed animal welfare or to address large scale wild animal suffering. Thankfully, today, there are significantly more, and I’m confident that will continue into the future.
For someone who is passionate about animal welfare and trying to figure out which area to work on, I think the key is staying open to where you can do the most good with the skills and opportunities you have at any given time, rather than feeling like you have to lock yourself into one area forever.
There are serious issues affecting many different groups of animals, and I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to go about your own career journey in improving the lives of animals.
How has your veterinary qualification affected your trajectory within animal welfare?
Of course one doesn’t need to be a veterinarian to be an effective advocate for animals. We need diversity in approaches, different voices, and varied backgrounds to build a strong movement. My path happened to include veterinary training, but there are many ways to make a meaningful impact in this field.
For me personally, I’ve found that veterinary knowledge has helped my work in various ways. When I was Executive Director of the SPCA, for example, one of the big projects we worked on was redesigning and revamping our community animal veterinary services. Advocating for animals was also a major part of the charity’s work, and having a solid understanding of the issues strengthened my ability to do that effectively.
It wasn’t just my vet background though—my training in animal welfare science, which I did while studying animal science after my undergraduate degree, has also shaped my views and advocacy. I think my science and medicine training gave me an evidence-based approach to advocacy work, which has been particularly useful when dealing with contentious issues where there are differing opinions.
This is helpful for people who are currently vets or are studying veterinary medicine and wondering, “will this advantage me in animal advocacy?” It sounds like the answer is that it can be very helpful.
Absolutely. I think veterinarians are in a very unique position because of the nature of our education and profession. It gives us opportunities to do things that others potentially cannot.
We have expertise that carries weight, and I think we need to acknowledge that it’s a privileged position. That also makes it incumbent on us, when we do see animal welfare or cruelty issues, to use that privilege to speak up and advocate for animals.
Is there anything you’d recommend for veterinary students interested in advocacy work?
The first thing I want to say is that you don’t necessarily have to choose between clinical and non-clinical work to be an animal welfare advocate and make a real difference for animals. It’s possible to do one or the other, or even both. And sometimes having that clinical background can be really effective because you gain experience that you can leverage in whatever space you want to advocate.
For current students, I’d strongly encourage exploring formal externships within your curriculum, or any opportunities you can get in vet school to be attached to a veterinarian doing some form of animal welfare work.
For example, you could get experience in laboratories and see what vets do there to advocate for animal welfare, or spend a few weeks with an international NGO, or at a farmed animal welfare organization. You can also take on mini research projects related to animal welfare while in school. These experiences are really useful because each position, each type of work has a different day-to-day reality. Not every type of work will speak to you.
And while you might have an ideal vision of what your career looks like, there’s nothing comparable to actually doing it yourself. Even if it’s just for a few weeks, you get valuable exposure and meet different people you can learn from. Those connections can be incredibly valuable down the line, they might lead to job opportunities, collaborations, or just having someone to reach out to when you need advice.
If you can find opportunities to be active in university groups, like I was in vet school with an animal welfare student organization, that can be really valuable too. It helped me learn how vets could influence animal welfare and connected me with a lot of veterinarians doing this work.
I’d also say don’t underestimate the power of staying curious and informed. Read widely about animal welfare issues, follow organizations doing work you find interesting, and don’t be afraid to reach out to people whose careers inspire you. Most people are happy to have a conversation with someone who’s genuinely interested in the field.
Finally, I’d encourage pursuing as wide a range of opportunities as you can to explore the world of possibilities that await you once you graduate. Your career path doesn’t have to be linear, and the experiences you gain along the way, even the ones that don’t seem directly related at the time, often end up being more valuable than you expect.
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