BluePearl’s General Counsel is recognized for her exemplary leadership and commitment to high ethical standards.
BluePearl Specialty and Emergency Pet Hospital’s General Counsel and Senior Leadership Team member, Yolanda Jameson, has been named Top Corporate Counsel Honoree 2021 by the Tampa Bay Business Journal. Top Corporate Counsel honorees come from all organizational categories, including public and private companies, government, and nonprofit, and are selected based on their exemplary leadership and commitment to high ethical standards.
As BluePearl’s first in-house General Counsel, Yolanda built the organization’s legal function from the ground up. Over the past five years, Yolanda and her team have created a variety of processes to remove significant administrative burdens from BluePearl hospitals so they can focus on what is most important: caring for sick and injured pets. As part of BluePearl’s Senior Leadership Team, Yolanda has been instrumental in helping the business grow, leading the execution and navigating the acquisition process of more than a dozen practices in 2020 alone.
I am privileged to have a true seat at the table at BluePearl and honored to be named Top Corporate Counsel Honoree 2021. As a member of BluePearl’s Senior Leadership Team, I contribute to overall strategies and goals for the company, as well as setting priorities for my own department,” explained Yolanda.
“Because the company has grown quickly, I led the way to establish foundational business processes, such as storage of our historical corporate and acquisition documents and handoffs between departments post-acquisition. My service-oriented approach colors everything I do, and I take pride in being a go-to resource for other departments.”
Yolanda’s role during acquisitions is much larger than wrangling documents; she is involved in every aspect of the deal, from LOI through integration. In 2020, Yolanda also led a capital structure-related project, which involved working with a number of professionals across Mars’ accounting, tax, and treasury teams. In addition, throughout the pandemic, she worked collaboratively with the Mars Veterinary Health legal team and BluePearl’s Safety Team and served as a liaison to the Senior Leadership Team to ensure hospitals could, from a regulatory standpoint, continued to provide critical services to the public while prioritizing Associate safety.
COVID-19 has been a huge challenge for everyone, particularly the health care and retail sectors. It has been an enormous undertaking for us at BluePearl, and one that accelerated relationships and collaboration across the Mars Veterinary Health legal team,” said Yolanda.
“Our legal team is working with federal regulatory agencies, and reviewing orders from more than 30 state governments, and dozens of localities to ensure compliance with COVID-19 safety mandates. Our business shifted our operations entirely, implementing telemedicine capabilities and a curbside model, and I advised our leadership team throughout that process. I’m incredibly proud that through those efforts, we were able to keep all of our hospitals open during the pandemic and continue to provide care for sick and injured pets.”
This years’ 20 Top Corporate Counsel Honorees will be recognized on the Tampa Bay Business Journal website, in print and in the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s Corporate Counsel special edition on May 7, 2021. The award ceremony will be held virtually on May 5, 2021, at 11 am and broadcasted to the local Tampa Bay Business community.
About BluePearl Specialty and Emergency Pet Hospital
Founded in 1996, BluePearl is one of the largest specialty and emergency veterinary practices in the U.S. today. BluePearl has more than 100 hospitals in 29 states that together employ +7,000 Associates, including 1,330+ veterinarians, 1,600+ veterinary technicians, and 4,100+ other professionals. Each year, our compassionate teams provide high-quality care for more than 1.1 million pets and their families. BluePearl clinicians also participate in clinical studies to discover new treatments and procedures that improve pet health.
As part of the Mars Veterinary Health family of brands, BluePearl is committed to its purpose — A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS® — because pets make a better world for us.
