Meet Dr. Lauren O’Neal-Mattos
Dr. Lauren O’Neal-Mattos was born in Palm Beach County Florida and was raised on the Treasure Coast, a true Floridian. While earning her Bachelor’s Degree of Science in Biology at Hawai’i Pacific University, Dr. O’Neal-Mattos worked at the Waikiki Aquarium, Honolulu Zoo, Sea Life Park and a small animal clinic as a technician. During her time on Oahu, she continued learning a great amount of knowledge in exotic medicine. She completed and published research from the Oceanic Institute on dolphin and shrimp projects. She has a deep love and passion for exotic and small animal medicine, and has worked at multiple zoos/aquariums over a decade and in small animal medicine over the last two decades.
After completing her Bachelor’s, Dr. O’Neal-Mattos attended veterinary school at Ross University in St. Kitts. During her three years on island, she did extensive sea turtle research and was part of the St. Kitts Sea Turtle Stranding Network. She then went on to complete her clinical year at Auburn University in Alabama. During her time at Auburn, she was able to work at the Raptor Center for specialty training with a large variety of birds and exotics. Dr. O’Neal-Mattos loves seeing a variety of animals and has a passion for soft tissue surgery, dentistry, urgent care cases, ultrasonography, client education with preventative medicine and complicated internal medicine cases.
When Dr. O’Neal-Mattos is not working you can find her with her husband, two children with the third on the way, two rescue cats, three dogs, and a leopard gecko. On the rare occasion of free time, she enjoys hanging out at the pool with her family, SCUBA diving, free diving, all things beach and outdoors related, the gym and reading. She looks forward to meeting all of your fur babies, and is very excited to be part of Animal Care Extraordinaire!
We can't wait for you to meet her when she starts on August 18th!
