TRIAGE™ vs. Leading Veterinary Teams (CLARITY)
Two programs for the same buyer pain — built by two different kinds of insider, for two different paths into leadership.
Both programs serve veterinary professionals who were promoted because they were excellent at their job and then expected to lead a team without training. Both founders built their programs from inside working hospitals. Both use a branded framework as the spine.
The difference is the door each founder came through, and that shapes who each program is built for.
Leading Veterinary Teams (CLARITY) was built by Suzanne Thomas, LVT — a Licensed Veterinary Technician with a career through hospital management and operations. CLARITY's five layers lead with emotional steadiness, trust, neurodiversity, and team dynamics. It's positioned primarily for credentialed technicians, hospital managers, and rising leaders on the operations/management path.
PIVOT TRIAGE™ was built by Kaelyn Petras, DVM — a practicing emergency medical director with ten years across four hospitals, currently the Emergency Medical Director at ARC Vets where she founded and chairs the Patient Safety Committee. TRIAGE™'s six modules lead with structural patterns (toxicity, role clarity, accountability, systems) and integrate emotional intelligence in the final module. It's built for any veterinary professional promoted from clinical excellence into leadership — primarily medical directors and nurse managers, but any leader running a team under pressure benefits.
If you have to pick one right now: if your path is clinician → leader of a clinical team under pressure, install TRIAGE™.
At a glance
These programs share buyer pain but solve different sides of it. The comparison below is for orientation, not a feature-checklist competition.
| TRIAGE™ Leadership System | LVT CLARITY | |
|---|---|---|
| Founder | Kaelyn Petras, DVM | Suzanne Thomas, LVT, MBA(c) |
| Founder current role | Emergency Medical Director & PSC Founder/Chair, ARC Vets | Founder, Leading Veterinary Teams |
| Origin discipline | Clinical leadership & patient safety governance | Operations management & technician advancement |
| Framework | TRIAGE™ — six modules | CLARITY — five layers |
| Methodology lean | Structure-first; EI integrated in Module 6 | EI-first; systems integrated in Layer 5 |
| Primary audience | Medical directors, lead clinicians, nurse managers — anyone promoted from clinical excellence | Credentialed technicians, hospital managers, rising leaders on the operations path |
| Pressure-context tracks | Emergency, Urgent Care, Multi-site, GP | Generalist |
| Format | Self-paced modular (individual) Cohort delivery (hospitals / groups) |
30-day CLARITY Reset |
| Duration | 6 weeks self-paced or cohort schedule by group |
30 days |
| Community | PIVOT Community on Learnworlds | Skool-hosted community |
| Free entry | Module 1 + Leadership Diagnostic | CLARITY Guide PDF + self-assessment |
| CE credit | RACE approval pending (expected early June 2026) | Not advertised |
| Individual price | $1,200 per seat | Waitlist — not published |
| Team pricing | $900/seat (3–5) $750/seat (6–15) |
Not published |
| Enterprise / multi-site | Custom pricing for 16+ seats | Not published |
Who built each program
The founder's career is the curriculum. Both LVT and TRIAGE™ are insider-built; the question is which insider, on which path.
Kaelyn Petras, DVM — PIVOT Vet Strategies
Ten years of clinical leadership across four hospitals: Assistant Intern Director at AVECCC (a Level 1 Trauma Center), Medical Director at Foothills Animal Hospital Emergency and Specialty Hospital (the flagship hospital for Companion Pet Partners, where she was an original Patient Safety Committee member), Hospital Director at Veterinary Emergency Group (VEG) Phoenix, and currently Emergency Medical Director at ARC Vets — where she founded and chairs the Patient Safety Committee.
TRIAGE™ reflects that career. The framework leads with structural patterns — naming toxicity, defining roles, building accountability, scaling through systems — because those are the levers clinical leaders pull when they're trying to hold a team together under pressure.
The Patient Safety Committee provenance is the structural differentiator. Patient safety committees exist to catch what's breaking, name it, and install the patterns that prevent recurrence. TRIAGE™ applies that same discipline to clinical-team leadership. The methodology isn't theoretical; it's the working model from the room where Kaelyn does this work every week.
Suzanne Thomas, LVT, MBA(c) — Leading Veterinary Teams
Career through the operations and hospital-management path: VCA Hospital Manager → Field Operations at Veterinary Emergency Group → Director of Operations at URvet Care → founded Leading Veterinary Teams. MBA candidate.
CLARITY reflects that operations lineage. The framework leads with emotional steadiness, trust, and team dynamics — the levers an operations leader pulls. It's built primarily for credentialed veterinary technicians, hospital managers, and rising leaders moving up through the operations side of the org chart.
Methodology: CLARITY's five layers vs. TRIAGE™'s six modules
The shape of each framework tells you what its founder believes leadership is fundamentally about.
TRIAGE™
- T — Tackling Toxicity
- R — Role Clarity and Responsibility
- I — Intentional, Influential, Intelligent Leadership
- A — Accountability Without Burnout
- G — Growth Through Systems
- E — Emotional Intelligence and Execution
CLARITY
- Self-awareness and emotional steadiness
- Trust and psychological safety
- Leading across neurodiversity and difference
- Team dynamics and cohesion
- Sustainable leadership systems
Read the order. CLARITY's first four layers are psychosocial — self-awareness, trust, neurodiversity, team dynamics. Sustainable systems arrive in layer five, as the consequence of the work below it. The shape says: leadership is fundamentally a human-dynamics practice, and structure follows.
TRIAGE™'s first five modules are explicitly structural — confronting toxicity, defining roles, leading deliberately, building accountability that doesn't burn people out, scaling through systems. Emotional intelligence arrives in module six, paired with execution. The shape says: leadership is a structural practice; emotional intelligence is a discipline of execution within the system, not a personality trait outside it.
This is the substantive divergence. Both frameworks include both elements. The difference is which layer carries the weight — and which lens the founder built the curriculum through.
Format and time commitment
CLARITY Reset is a 30-day program, currently waitlist-gated, supported by an ongoing Skool community for peer connection between cohorts. The cadence is built for a concentrated reset followed by community continuity.
TRIAGE™ is a six-module leadership operating system delivered two ways. Individuals enroll self-paced and move through the modules over six weeks in 30–60 minute blocks between shifts. Hospitals and multi-site groups enroll as cohorts on a rolling basis, with start dates scheduled when the team is ready. The PIVOT Community on Learnworlds gives enrolled participants ongoing peer access alongside the curriculum.
Each TRIAGE™ module installs a specific structural element a leader can implement on shift the same week. Different shape of intervention: CLARITY is a 30-day reset; TRIAGE™ is an installable operating system.
Pricing
TRIAGE™ pricing is published and scales with team size:
| Buyer type | Per-seat price |
|---|---|
| Individual | $1,200 |
| Small team (3–5 seats) | $900 per seat |
| Team rollout (6–15 seats) | $750 per seat |
| Enterprise / multi-site (16+) | Custom pricing |
The math on a team rollout: 10 seats at $750/seat is $7,500 — meaningfully less than the same headcount through most cohort-based competitors. Pricing scales down because the unit economics of an installable system scale that way.
LVT CLARITY pricing is not publicly listed. The CLARITY Reset is waitlist-gated; pricing comes through the waitlist conversation.
Published pricing matters for team buyers. If you need to share program cost with a partner, an HR team, or a budget approver before booking a sales call, the practical difference is real.
What CLARITY does that TRIAGE™ doesn't
- Explicit DEI / neurodiversity framing as a methodology layer. CLARITY's third layer is "leading across neurodiversity and difference" as a named core element, not an add-on.
- Technician-elevation positioning. CLARITY is explicitly built to raise the leadership profile of credentialed technicians (LVTs/CVTs/RVTs). If you're a credentialed technician moving into leadership and want curriculum built around that identity, CLARITY's framing is direct.
- Concentrated 30-day cadence. A shorter total program length than TRIAGE™'s six-week installation arc.
What TRIAGE™ does that CLARITY doesn't
- DVM-led clinical leadership lens. Built by a working emergency medical director with ten years across four hospitals — AVECCC L1 Trauma, Foothills (Companion Pet Partners flagship), VEG Phoenix Hospital Director, and ARC Vets EMD.
- Patient Safety Committee provenance. Kaelyn founded and chairs the PSC at ARC Vets and served on the original PSC at Foothills. The structural discipline that runs TRIAGE™ is the same one she practices in patient safety governance every week — not theory.
- Pressure-context-segmented tracks. Separate Emergency, Urgent Care, Multi-site, and General Practice content. The same module is contextualized to your clinical setting, not taught generically.
- Six-module operating-system depth. A longer, more structurally detailed install than a 30-day reset format. Designed for change that persists once the program ends.
- Published, scaling pricing. $1,200 individual, scaling down to $750/seat for team rollouts. No waitlist, no sales call required to learn cost.
- Two no-commitment entry points. Free Leadership Diagnostic and free Module 1 (full module, no time gate) before any pricing conversation.
- RACE accreditation pending. Approval expected early June 2026. CE credit hours issued to all participants on completion, including those who enrolled before the approval date.
Who each program is best for
TRIAGE™ is best for you if:
- You were promoted because you were excellent at your previous role and you're now expected to lead a team
- You're a medical director, lead clinician, nurse manager, hospital manager, or multi-site supervisor
- You work in emergency, urgent care, multi-site, or high-volume general practice — pressure shapes your day
- Your leadership challenge is operational and structural before it's emotional
- You want published pricing and team-rollout economics that scale down
- You want a structural framework built by someone who's actually run the kind of clinical team you're running now
CLARITY may be a closer fit if:
- You're a credentialed veterinary technician and want curriculum positioned around that identity
- Your leadership challenge is primarily team dynamics or emotional culture rather than structural breakdown
- You're not operating in a high-pressure clinical context where shift-to-shift structural consistency is the central problem
- You want a 30-day concentrated reset rather than a six-week installation arc
- The phrase "leadership shouldn't feel this heavy" names exactly how you currently feel
Both programs serve people who were handed leadership without training, so some buyers will see themselves in both pitches. The honest cut: if your team is running on broken structural patterns and you're the one expected to fix it, personal-development work doesn't compound on top of a broken operating system. The structural install has to land first. That's the job TRIAGE™ was built to do.
How to start with TRIAGE™
- Take the free Leadership Diagnostic6 questions, immediate result. Tells you which of the six TRIAGE™ modules you'd install first.
- Try Module 1 freeFull module, no time gate. See the methodology before you spend anything.
- EnrollIndividuals: $1,200 self-paced. Teams of 3+: $900/seat sliding to $750/seat for groups of 6–15, with cohort delivery on a rolling schedule.