Amy Bartholomew knew she had to find a way to combine her love of sport and her desire for a professional career when she was in high school at Riverside. Amy graduated from Riverside in 1992. Today, she is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine with several publications and presentations, and an accomplished marathoner (12 years running the Boston Marathon), swimmer, and triathlete–qualifying to represent Team USA in World Championships in 2019 and 2020.
The love of sport also leads Amy to give extensively to her community, particularly as a certified coach for cross country training through the Georgia High School Athletic Association. In this work, Amy supplied guidance for competition and good sportsmanship, as well as encouraging acceptance and training for special needs students. That effort became a model for how teams could foster inclusion of athletes with developmental challenges.
The Athletic Hall of Fame selection committee found that Amy’s demonstrated excellence in sport and her academic and professional career are combined in her community service where she not only instilled a love of running, but even more importantly, she instilled empathy, kindness and resilience in young people of all walks of life.
While at Riverside, Amy won honors and varsity letters in swimming, cross-country and track. Amy holds the school record in swimming for the 100-yard breaststroke and was the swim team’s “most valuable player” for the ’89-’90 and ’90-’91 school years.
Her professional career took shape at The Ohio State University, graduating in 1996 cum laude with distinction, with a B.S. in animal sciences and minor in life sciences/biochemistry. While earning her degree, Amy was awarded First Place in the Denman Undergraduate Scientific Forum and spent a year at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, China. Subsequently, Amy pursued a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, graduating in 2000. She was awarded the Ohio State University President’s Leadership Citation and an Excellence in Research Award by the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society.
Amy first worked for University of Georgia on the clinical teaching staff in the Department of Large Animal Medicine and Surgery. Her experiences led her to become a field veterinarian for the British Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food in response to the 2001 Foot & Mouth Disease outbreak in northern England and Scotland. Following this assignment, she took Veterinary Medical Officer positions with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animals and Plant Health, based in the Atlanta, Georgia, area. She worked first for the Animal Care program (2001-2008) and later for the Veterinary Services program where she conducted compliance inspections and served as a liaison between private practitioners, industry, and government.
Her professional role also included presenting at national and international venues including professional education conferences and the World Congress on Disasters and Emergency Medicine. Amy has also authored or co-authored several professional articles that include peer-reviewed journals and a reference book.
Amy’s sporting life includes eleven consecutive Boston Marathons. Her personal bests after the age of forty are 3 hours, 16 minutes and 48 seconds for the marathon and 18 minutes and seconds in the 5k. Amy is a member of the Atlanta Track Club Elite Team where she has achieved success in various events for her age group, including a National Team Title, at the Club XC Championships. In 2019, Amy achieved the state record for her age group in US Masters Swimming for the long-course two hundred meter backstroke. That same year, she qualified to represent USA and competed in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Nice France, swimming 1.1 miles, biking 56 miles and running 13.1 miles. Amy also qualified for 2020 in competition in Edmonton, Canada (canceled due to Covid-19).
Amy and her husband, Bryan Koepp, also a marathon runner, live in Georgia with their two young sons, where Amy stays active in community events and projects.
