Visual CV: My Journey from Veterinary Medicine to Medical Illustration by Diogo Guerra

As a Veterinarian-turned-Medical-Illustrator, I’ve often struggled with how to clearly explain – to me and everyone else – how I transitioned from one career into the other. As a personal project, I challenged myself to use Data Visualization to create a Visual CV – a Timeline-Sankey Diagram hybrid that visualized the contribution of previous educational and professional experiences to the multiple technical competences I possess today. I wanted to emphasize how both my backgrounds – Veterinary Medicine and Visual Medical Communications – were crucial to my professional development, and debunk the myth that I have been losing time by starting my professional career in a field apparently so different from my current one. Through this process, I have come to establish even more interesting connections. Ultimately, this piece makes me extremely happy as I'm able to confirm that wherever our path leads us, all the things we've learned before will become useful in a way or another.

Original Sankey Diagram was created in Flourish, and Timeline and layout were finalized in Adobe Illustrator.