Our Team

The team building the future of veterinary diagnostics.

Deep expertise across veterinary diagnostics, medicine, and technology — focused on building a modern, cloud-based platform for the profession.

Founders

Derick Whitley, DVM, DACVP

Founder, CEO

Dr. Derick Whitley is an entrepreneur and anatomic pathologist with more than fifteen years in the veterinary diagnostics industry. He founded Travv to build the next generation of diagnostics, powered by AI. Before Travv, he worked across startup, venture capital, and corporate roles, most recently leading Vidium Animal Health to an exit in 2024. In his 9 years at Antech Diagnostics Derick helped lead the first large-scale digital pathology conversion, and worked with teams building the earliest commercial computer vision models. He holds adjunct faculty appointments at TGen and Oklahoma State University.

Tony Pease, DVM, DACVR

Co-founder, Chief Radiologist

Dr. Tony Pease is a board-certified veterinary radiologist and lifelong educator with almost 20 years in the veterinary diagnostic imaging space. He is a former president of the American College of Veterinary Radiology and a former tenured professor and section chief of diagnostic imaging at Michigan State University, and currently also holds the role of Chief Veterinary Medical Officer for the Viticus Group, formerly known as WVC.

Zachary Runyan

Co-founder, CTO

Zach Runyan is a software engineer and product manager with over 15 years of experience building product teams and startups. As CTO, he co-founded Travv and is leading the engineering and technology strategy behind the Travv Dx platform. Before Travv, he spent his career building applications and teams across industry-defining diagnostics, cybersecurity, and telecommunications companies. He built and led the engineering team behind an early veterinary digital cytology platform at Lacuna Diagnostics, later acquired by Heska, scaling it to serve hundreds of hospitals globally. He has since held engineering leadership roles at Todyl and Vellum.

Team

John Craig, PhD

Director of Machine Learning

Dr. John Craig is an engineer with more than three decades of work at the intersection of robotics, control systems, and machine learning. As Director of Machine Learning, he leads the development of Travv's AI tools for veterinary imaging. For the past 25 years he has built software for veterinarians, developing deep learning models for veterinary imaging. He authored Introduction to Robotics, the field's leading university textbook for 35 years, now in its fourth edition and translated into twelve languages, and earlier in his career won the Robotic Industries Association's Engelberger Award and worked on NASA's Mars Rover team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and serves on AI committees for the AVMA, ACVR, and AAEP.

Advisors

Darien Schettler

AI Advisor

AI Architect at Broadcom. Extensive experience in Computer Vision for Health Care. 2× Kaggle Grandmaster

Richard French, DVM, DACVP

International Advisor — Asia

Experienced Executive Leader, International Consultant, Veterinary Pathologist. Co-founder AVDC in China. 25+ years in Veterinary Diagnostics

Todd Tams, DVM, DACVIM

Medical Advisor

Veterinary Internist, Executive Leader. Former Chief Medical Officer of VCA. 25+ years in Veterinary Medicine