Gunila Pedersen

Gunila Pedersen is a Danish small animal vet and Master Certified Life Coach who helps colleagues overcome and prevent burnout. She graduated from the Vet School in Copenhagen in 2004, and after a brief stint vaccinating goats in the Spanish hills, then working in a small animal clinic, she founded her own small animal practice in Spain. She ran the clinic for nine years before the 2009 financial crisis pushed her into locum work in the UK in 2012, which she did as well as running the clinic. When COVID hit, the pressures of constant emergency work caught up with her, and she eventually burnt out— stepping away from veterinary medicine for a year to recover.

It was during that time that Gunila discovered life coaching. Initially, she sought coaching to reconnect with her teenage daughters, but it gave her such a profound sense of peace and joy that she not only returned to the profession as an ECC vet, but also trained to become a coach herself. Today she splits her time between working OOH shifts in the UK one week a
month and running her coaching business the rest of the time, offering one-to-one coaching, webinars, workshops, and The Overwhelmed Vet Podcast.

Gunila is trilingual, having lived in Spain for more than half her life, and now divides her time between homes in Denmark and Spain while working in Kettering, UK. She has two grown daughters with her Spanish ex-husband and is now married to a man from Warrington —whom she met in a wonderfully random way through a British client in her Spanish practice.

Outside of vet med, Gunila has a wide range of passions: she is obsessed with cats, committed to veganism and animal welfare, and has trained in Muay Thai for seven years. She once had private sessions in Thailand with an ex-champion, who later gave her and her daughter VIP tickets to fight night. She also enjoys CrossFit in Denmark (still chasing her first strict pull-up), rides a Suzuki Bandit 1250, and previously belly danced for eight years, often performing for charity. On top of that, she loves hiking, snorkelling, winter swimming, and trying new water sports – even if kitesurfing so far has been more falling than standing.

Gunila is passionate about showing vets that resilience and joy are possible in this demanding profession. She believes that emotional strength is as vital as clinical skills, and that through coaching, veterinarians can rediscover the enthusiasm and purpose that first brought them into the job.

Useful Links