35 Essential Thought Leaders in Dental Practice

Dentistry produces clinicians by the tens of thousands every year. It produces genuine leaders far more rarely. The training that prepares someone to diagnose, treat, and communicate with patients in a clinical setting bears almost no resemblance to the training required to hire well, build culture, navigate conflict, retain a team, set financial strategy, and lead a practice through the kind of change that the dental industry has been experiencing at accelerating speed.

Research from the Global Leadership Forecast found that only 40 percent of leaders globally feel confident in their ability to lead their organisations through significant change. In dentistry, where most practice owners received zero formal business or leadership education before opening their doors, that figure is likely lower.

The result is that dental practice leadership has become one of the fastest-growing and most urgent professional development conversations in healthcare. The number of podcasts, conferences, mastermind communities, coaching programmes, and leadership-focused publications dedicated specifically to dental practice leadership has exploded in the last decade. Globally, the dental support organisation (DSO) market was estimated at USD 26.9 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.4 percent through 2030, a trajectory that makes strong leadership not just desirable but existential.

This list is for anyone trying to navigate that landscape, whether you are a solo practice owner who has just hired your fifth team member and realised you are now a manager, a DSO executive scaling across multiple sites, a dental school graduate wondering what kind of leader you want to become, or someone who simply wants to know whose ideas are worth following. The thought leaders profiled here come from private practice, group practice, DSO leadership, consulting, coaching, media, team training, and technology. They span North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Bring Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with 10,000 copies sold globally, in to help your leadership team build the culture and communication systems that let the ideas on this list actually take root in your practice. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Dental Practice Leadership Matters

There is a quietly devastating truth at the centre of most struggling dental practices: the problem is rarely clinical. The patient experience is excellent. The chair time is efficient. The restorations are beautiful. The problem is that the team is fractured, the culture is unclear, the leader is exhausted, and nobody knows how to have the conversations that need to happen.

A 2023 survey of dental professionals in the United States found that staff turnover was the number one business concern among practice owners, ahead of insurance reimbursements, competition from DSOs, and rising overhead. Turnover in dental practices costs an average of between 50 and 200 percent of an annual salary per departure when lost productivity, recruitment, and training costs are factored in. For a small dental team of eight or ten people, a single departure can destabilise everything.

The leaders on this list are the people who have thought most carefully, most publicly, and most helpfully about what it takes to build a practice that does not depend entirely on the energy, presence, and willpower of its owner. They write about culture and systems, about the clinician-to-leader transition, about the unique psychological pressures of being the person responsible for both the clinical outcome and the business outcome simultaneously.

If you are ready to apply what these thinkers teach to your own practice, Jonno White, experienced leadership workshop facilitator and Working Genius Certified Facilitator completing the world's fastest growing team assessment with leaders around the world, is available to work with your dental leadership team. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

The people on this list were selected based on their genuine contribution to the field of dental practice leadership, assessed through the quality and consistency of their published content, the scale and engagement of the communities they serve, and the recognition they have received from professional organisations, industry publications, and peer practitioners. The selection process prioritised geographic diversity across English-language markets including the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, as well as disciplinary diversity spanning solo practice coaching, DSO executive leadership, team culture development, technology leadership, and women in leadership.

A conscious effort was made to include emerging voices alongside established authorities, and to represent both the dominant US-led conversation and the distinct perspectives that arise from the UK's independent practice culture and Australia's evolving market. The result is a list that reflects the full breadth of what dental practice leadership means in 2026, not just the most famous names, but the most genuinely useful ones.

Category 1: The Practice Growth Entrepreneurs

These are the voices who have lived the journey from solo practitioner to multi-site entrepreneur and built platforms to share what they learned. They understand the specific psychology of the dentist who loves clinical work and has discovered, sometimes against their will, that the real leverage in their career is in systems, culture, and leadership rather than in adding another operatory. Their content is practical, opinionated, and grounded in real numbers from real practices.

1. Mark Costes DDS | Dental Success Network

Twelve practices built and sold, 1,750 podcast episodes, a community of nearly 1,300 dentists, and a bestselling book represent the footprint Mark Costes has built in dental practice leadership over the past decade. As co-founder and CEO of the Dental Success Network and founder of the Dental Success Institute, Costes has created the most comprehensive ecosystem for dentist-entrepreneurs in the profession. His content, delivered through The Dentalpreneur Podcast with over nine million downloads, addresses the full arc of practice growth from single chair to scalable system.

What makes Costes particularly valuable as a thought leader is his willingness to discuss failure as clearly as success. His keynote at the Voices of Dentistry 2025 conference, in which he described the burnout that accompanied his own early success and introduced his six-pillar Elite Practice Blueprint for building practices that function without owner dependence, is among the most honest accounts of what growth without leadership investment actually costs a dentist personally.

2. Roger Levin DDS | Levin Group

Roger Levin has been building the intellectual infrastructure of dental practice management for longer than most current dentists have been alive. He founded the Levin Group in 1982 and has since worked with more than 30,000 dental practices, authored 68 books, and written more than 4,300 articles on practice management and marketing, making him the most prolific voice on the business of dentistry anywhere in the world. He has been named to the 32 Most Influential People in Dentistry list by Incisal Edge magazine and consistently recognised as the leading authority in practice management consulting.

Levin's distinctive contribution is his insistence on systems as the foundation of sustainable practice leadership. His Level IV Leadership framework, which identifies the specific leadership behaviours that separate the top ten percent of performing dental practices from the rest, has influenced how the profession thinks about what leadership in a dental practice actually requires. His Production Tip of the Day newsletter reaches more than 25,000 dental professionals, giving him daily access to a significant portion of the profession's decision-makers.

3. Gary Takacs | Takacs Learning Center

Few people in dentistry have combined the roles of active practice co-owner and practice coach with as much sustained credibility as Gary Takacs. As the founder of the Takacs Learning Center, host of The Thriving Dentist Show podcast (downloaded in 188 countries), and instructor on the Business of Dentistry at the Pankey Institute, Takacs has coached more than 2,200 dental practices over three decades, drawing on his direct experience transforming a struggling, insurance-heavy practice into one of the top-performing practices in the United States.

His particular focus on fee-for-service dentistry as a leadership and culture choice rather than simply a financial strategy has made him a defining voice in the conversation about what kind of practice owner a dentist wants to be. Takacs argues consistently that reducing insurance dependence is not primarily about profitability, it is about building the kind of patient relationships and team culture that sustain meaningful clinical work over a career.

4. Peter Boulden DDS | Atlanta Dental Spa

Peter Boulden runs a four-location dental enterprise in Georgia, built around what he describes as a deliberate obsession with the patient experience from first contact to final visit. As co-host of the Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast alongside Craig Spodak, Boulden has built one of the most practically useful platforms in the profession for dental entrepreneurs navigating the realities of modern competition from corporate dentistry, technology disruption, and rapidly changing patient expectations.

His particular contribution to the dental leadership conversation is his willingness to be publicly wrong and publicly learning. Boulden has stated in multiple podcast episodes that his biggest early mistakes as a practice owner were leadership failures, not clinical ones, specifically around hiring decisions and culture definition. That willingness to model intellectual humility as a leadership practice is unusual in a space where authority is often constructed through the projection of certainty.

5. Craig Spodak DDS | Spodak Dental Group

Third-generation dentist Craig Spodak has built something genuinely unusual in dentistry: a 13,000-square-foot, LEED Gold Certified dental facility in Delray Beach, Florida, that has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing businesses in America. As co-host of the Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast, Spodak brings a vision of dental practice as a design challenge, asking what a dental patient's experience could be if you took every conventional assumption about what a dental office looks and feels like and rebuilt it from first principles.

His 2018 book The Bulletproof Practice, co-authored with Peter Boulden, articulates the business philosophy behind his practice model and has become required reading in dental leadership circles. His thinking on team culture, patient-centric design, and the leadership identity of the modern dentist combines clinical credibility with genuine entrepreneurial ambition, making him one of the more original voices in a space that can sometimes default to formula.

Category 2: The Practice Coaches and Consultants

These are the thought leaders who have made it their life's work to sit inside dental practices and help owners see what they cannot see themselves. They are the external eyes, the culture diagnosticians, the systems architects. Many of them have clinical backgrounds; all of them have spent thousands of hours understanding the specific dynamics that make dental practice leadership different from other small business leadership. Their contribution is the translation work: taking insights from the business world and making them actionable for a practice of eight people operating out of a medical suite.

6. Gary Kadi | NextLevel Practice

Gary Kadi has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of leadership transformation and dental practice profitability. As the founder of NextLevel Practice, his methodology is built on five interdependent pillars: leadership development, team culture, patient experience, financial health, and community engagement, all of which he argues must be addressed together for sustainable practice growth to occur. His work has reached thousands of practitioners across North America.

His most significant intellectual contribution to dental leadership is his insistence that the leader's personal development is the non-negotiable prerequisite for practice transformation. Kadi's framework explicitly treats leadership growth as the first domino in the sequence: until the owner has a clear vision, communicates expectations, and creates accountability structures, no system or marketing strategy will produce lasting results.

7. Kiera Dent | Dental A Team

Kiera Dent built the Dental A Team with a philosophy that every dental practice team deserves access to coaching that is practical, accessible, and immediately applicable. As podcast host, author, and practice coach, she has built a community around systems-based team leadership that emphasises clarity, accountability, and the kind of communication that prevents the small misunderstandings and dropped responsibilities that erode culture in small practices over time.

Her contribution to the conversation is her focus on the team member's experience of leadership, rather than solely the owner's perspective. Dent's coaching consistently asks: what does it feel like to work in this practice, and what specific systems or behaviours would need to change for team members to feel genuinely supported, valued, and clear about their contribution? Her podcast, which reaches dental professionals across multiple countries, has been a consistent source of practical leadership content.

8. Teresa Duncan | Odyssey Management

Teresa Duncan brings a combination of management expertise and insurance intelligence that is genuinely rare in dental practice leadership coaching. As founder of Odyssey Management and a sought-after speaker at major dental conferences, her work sits at the intersection of operational systems, team leadership, and the financially complex realities of insurance-heavy dental practices. Her approach recognises that leadership in dentistry cannot be separated from the financial pressures that shape every decision a practice owner makes.

Her book on building effective dental teams draws directly from her experience helping practices navigate the human dimensions of operational change, specifically the resistance, confusion, and communication breakdowns that accompany system transitions. Duncan is particularly well regarded for her ability to make the technical aspects of practice management accessible to team members at every level, which is itself a leadership skill that most practice coaches underestimate.

9. Judy Kay Mausolf | Practice Solutions

Judy Kay Mausolf describes herself as a dental culture specialist, and that specific framing reflects something genuinely important about her contribution to the field. As a speaker, author, and coach, and as a past president of the National Speakers Association Minnesota Chapter, she has spent her career focused on the interpersonal dynamics that determine whether a dental team functions as a cohesive unit or a collection of individuals who happen to share a waiting room. Her book Practice with Purpose helps practice leaders understand the direct connection between team culture and patient experience.

Her work is distinctive for its emphasis on how leaders communicate, not just what systems they implement. Mausolf's coaching addresses the specific verbal habits, meeting practices, and feedback styles that either build or erode trust in a small dental team. Her argument, grounded in years of working with practices of all sizes, is that most dental culture problems are communication problems in disguise, and that solving them requires the leader to change their own behaviour first.

10. Bill Blatchford DDS | Blatchford Solutions

Bill Blatchford spent three decades as a practising dentist before founding Blatchford Solutions, one of the most established practice coaching organisations in dentistry. Working alongside his daughter and fellow dentist Christina Blatchford, he has developed a coaching methodology that combines 30 years of firsthand clinical experience with structured business coaching, delivered through a model that pairs both a doctor coach and a team coach with each client practice for 18 months.

His most significant contribution to dental leadership thinking is his consistent argument that work-life balance and practice profitability are not competing priorities but mutually reinforcing ones. Blatchford Solutions has consistently demonstrated that practices operating with fewer hours, cleaner systems, and more intentional leadership culture produce better financial results than practices that simply grind harder.

11. Chuck Blakeman | Crankset Group

Chuck Blakeman is the most genuinely contrarian voice on this list, and that is precisely what makes him worth paying attention to. As the founder of the Crankset Group and author of the forthcoming book Rehumanising Dentistry, Blakeman brings to dental practice leadership a perspective shaped by building and exiting 14 businesses across nine countries, and by a sustained critique of what he calls the Industrial Age model of management that he argues still dominates most dental practices.

His Participation Age model argues that the most resilient and productive dental practices are those where team members are genuinely involved in decision-making, goal-setting, and practice improvement, not as a motivational technique, but as a structural design choice. Blakeman's work forces dental practice leaders to ask uncomfortable questions about whether their management systems are actually producing the kind of team culture they say they want.

Category 3: The Team Culture Architects

These thought leaders have made team dynamics, communication, and culture their primary focus. They understand that the patient experience is always a downstream consequence of the team experience, and that the hardest leadership work in a dental practice is not the strategy or the systems but the human beings: hiring them well, developing them intentionally, communicating with clarity, and creating the conditions where people actually want to stay.

12. Laura Hatch | Front Office Rocks

Laura Hatch has built Front Office Rocks around a deceptively simple premise: the front office team is the single most important leadership leverage point in any dental practice, and almost nobody is training front office staff to lead. As founder of a platform that has reached thousands of dental practices globally, she focuses on the specific skills, systems, and leadership orientation that front office team members need to move from reactive administration to genuine patient experience leadership.

Her contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the elevation of non-clinical team members as genuine leaders in their own right. Hatch's work argues that practice owners who invest seriously in front office leadership see a direct return in new patient conversion, patient retention, and overall practice culture, because the team member a patient encounters first is the one who shapes everything that follows.

13. Kyle Summerford | Dental Office Managers Alliance

Kyle Summerford has built the Dental Office Managers Alliance (DOMA) into the most comprehensive professional community for dental office managers in the United States. As Editorial Director for Dental Office Manager content on DentistryIQ.com and founder of the DOMA ecosystem, which includes the Dental Office Managers Community, DOMA Academy Online and Live, and the DOMA Influence Alliance, he has created infrastructure for a role that is central to dental practice leadership but often overlooked in professional development conversations.

His most significant contribution is the consistent argument that the office manager is the practice's internal leader of culture, systems, and team performance, and that when this role is developed seriously rather than treated as administrative overhead, the impact on practice results is significant and measurable. Summerford's community has elevated the professional identity of dental office managers in ways that have directly benefited the practices they lead.

14. Dee Fischer | Dee Fischer Consulting

Dee Fischer has built her consulting and coaching practice around a question that more dental practice owners should be asking: what is your culture actually producing for your team, not just for your patients? Her work with private practices focuses on the specific intersection of personal leadership development and team systems, helping practice owners understand that the culture they have is always a direct reflection of the leadership they are modelling. Her podcast content and speaking engagements consistently bring this message to practitioners who are excellent clinicians but are still developing as organisational leaders.

Her contribution to the dental leadership conversation is her focus on the inner work of leadership: the mindset shifts, the self-awareness practices, and the willingness to be honest about leadership gaps that most practice owners find uncomfortable to confront. Fischer's coaching starts with the leader rather than with the systems, and her track record with private practices reflects the impact of that approach.

15. Wendy Briggs | The Team Training Institute

Wendy Briggs has spent decades focused on the specific leadership dynamics of the dental hygiene department, which is in most practices the team's largest revenue-generating function and, paradoxically, one of the most under-led parts of the practice. As co-founder of The Team Training Institute alongside John Meis DDS, Briggs has built a coaching methodology that treats hygienists as leaders rather than technicians, developing their capacity to educate patients, recommend comprehensive treatment, and contribute to practice culture in ways that go far beyond their clinical function.

Her book Hygienist with a Heart outlines the leadership philosophy behind her approach: that dental hygienists who see themselves as patient advocates and practice contributors rather than appointment-fillers produce dramatically better patient outcomes and financial results. The Team Training Institute's work across North America has demonstrated that investing in hygiene team leadership is one of the highest-return leadership investments a practice can make.

Category 4: The DSO and Group Practice Leaders

These are the voices shaping the conversation about what leadership looks like when dentistry scales. The DSO model is now the fastest-growing sector in dental practice, and the leadership challenges it creates are genuinely distinct from those of the solo practice: culture consistency across sites, associate development, operational standardisation without clinical autonomy erosion, and the specific dynamics of leading dentists as employees rather than owners.

16. Jake Puhl | Dentist Entrepreneur Organisation

Jake Puhl co-founded the Dentist Entrepreneur Organisation (DEO) in 2016 with 19 members and built it over eight years into a community of more than 300 dental entrepreneurs. In March 2025, he transitioned from CEO to Chief Growth Officer, with Emmet Scott taking the CEO role, and he continues to be one of the most active voices in the DEO community on the specific question of what it means to think like a CEO rather than a clinician. His framework of the Five Stages of Profitability has given thousands of dental practice owners a language for understanding where they are in the scaling journey.

His contribution to the dental leadership conversation is his consistent reframing of dental practice ownership as an entrepreneurial leadership challenge rather than a clinical management problem. Puhl's argument is that the single most important mindset shift for a dentist moving into group practice is accepting that their primary job is no longer dentistry but leadership, and that the skills required for that shift are learnable, not innate.

17. Bill Neumann | Group Dentistry Now

Bill Neumann has built Group Dentistry Now into the leading media platform for the dental group practice and DSO sector in the United States, and in doing so has become one of the most well-connected thought leaders in the space. As CEO, podcast host, and conference co-organiser of the Dental Leadership Summit, he sits at the intersection of the industry's most important conversations, connecting executives, investors, operators, and clinicians who are shaping how group dentistry evolves.

His most significant contribution is the platform itself: by creating a dedicated media home for group practice leadership, Neumann has helped legitimise group dentistry as a distinct leadership discipline rather than simply a business model. His annual Emerging Groups to Watch awards have elevated the visibility of dentist-led group practices that are building something genuinely different. His podcast interviews have given thousands of practitioners access to thinking previously available only to those with direct industry access.

18. Jeromy Dixson DDS | The DSO Project

Jeromy Dixson has built, led, and advised dental support organisations at a level that few practitioners achieve. As a three-time Inc. Magazine 500/5000 recognised entrepreneur, founder of Dental Capital Partners, The DSO Project, and SmartDiligence, and advisor to private equity firms investing in dental platforms, Dixson operates at the highest levels of dental group practice leadership. His career has spanned clinical practice, DSO founding, and the increasingly complex intersection of healthcare and private equity.

His most significant contribution to the dental leadership conversation is his work on what separates DSOs that build durable cultures from those that acquire practices but never truly integrate them. Dixson's framework for creating unified team cultures across multi-site dental organisations, developed through his experience building and advising DSOs valued at more than 150 million dollars, has become a reference point for DSO leaders who understand that clinical consolidation without cultural integration rarely produces the results either party was hoping for.

19. Geith Kallas DDS | Smile Makers Dental Center

Geith Kallas is one of the most articulate practising dentists on the subject of leading a growing dental group through rapid transformation. As CEO of Smile Makers Dental Center and a consistent contributor to Becker's Dental Review, he has built a practice that integrates AI-powered analytics, digital workflow transformation, and deliberate leadership development in ways that make visible the specific decisions a dentist-owner must make when scaling without losing clinical or cultural integrity.

His contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the ground-level CEO perspective: not the post-hoc wisdom of someone who has already scaled and sold, but the real-time thinking of a dentist actively navigating growth, AI adoption, and talent development simultaneously. His focus on same-day care protocols, associate development, and team retention as leadership priorities has made him a voice worth following for any dentist navigating the owner-operator to organisational leader transition.

20. Sibera Brannon DDS | Affordable Dentures and Implants

Sibera Brannon has built her leadership identity around two equally demanding commitments: delivering clinical excellence and extending dental care to communities that cannot afford it. As owner of an Affordable Dentures and Implants location in Arizona and founder of Project NicaRisas, a dental and literacy outreach initiative in Nicaragua, Brannon represents a form of dental practice leadership that integrates business growth with genuine social purpose.

Her contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the explicit connection between a practice's internal culture and its external impact. Brannon argues that generosity is a leadership strategy, not just a personal value, and that the practices that integrate community impact into their identity tend to develop team cultures that are more resilient, more purposeful, and more able to retain the kind of people who do outstanding clinical work. Her consistent Becker's Dental Review contributions have amplified this message.

21. John Meis DDS | The Team Training Institute

John Meis has built the Team Training Institute with a single clear thesis: the dental practices that grow fastest are not the ones that add the best equipment or the most aggressive marketing, they are the ones that develop the strongest teams. As co-founder of the Team Training Institute alongside Wendy Briggs, Meis has worked with hundreds of practices across North America to build the specific leadership and communication skills that translate directly into case acceptance, hygiene production, and patient retention.

His contribution to the dental leadership conversation is his focus on the measurable relationship between team development and financial performance, making the leadership investment case in language that dentists, who are trained to think in evidence and outcomes, can hear clearly. Meis consistently argues that team development is not a cultural luxury but a business necessity, and the data from practices that have applied his training supports that argument.

Category 5: The UK and International Voices

Dental practice leadership in the United Kingdom has its own distinct character, shaped by a healthcare system that divides dentistry between NHS contract work and private fee-for-service practice, creating a leadership tension that US-based content rarely addresses. The voices in this category represent a perspective that is underrepresented on most global dental leadership lists despite being genuinely valuable: the experience of building a leadership culture in a market where the business model itself is a leadership decision.

22. Payman Langroudi | Enlighten Smiles / Dental Leaders Podcast

Payman Langroudi is the clinical director at Enlighten Smiles and the co-host of the Dental Leaders Podcast, which has produced more than 320 episodes of long-form conversations with dental leaders, entrepreneurs, and practitioners across the UK and internationally. His approach to the Dental Leaders Podcast is genuinely distinctive: where most dental podcast hosts focus primarily on systems and profitability, Langroudi is consistently more interested in backstory, psychology, and the inner life of dental leadership.

His most significant contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the creation of a detailed, publicly accessible archive of how real dental leaders actually think, not how they present themselves at conferences. The Dental Leaders Podcast has become an important resource for practitioners who want to understand the human dimensions of dental leadership rather than just the operational ones. The podcast has produced more than 320 episodes across the UK and international markets.

23. Prav Solanki | Dental Leaders Podcast

Prav Solanki co-hosts the Dental Leaders Podcast and brings a specific expertise in digital marketing, patient communication, and the brand-building dimensions of dental practice leadership. His work in building dental practices' digital presence, combined with his deep knowledge of how successful dental leaders think about patient relationships, has given him a perspective that bridges the clinical, commercial, and communication challenges of modern dental practice leadership in the UK.

His contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the consistent argument that how a practice presents itself to the world is itself a leadership decision, one that reflects the values, priorities, and identity of the person leading it. Solanki's marketing and communication expertise applied through a dental leadership lens produces content that is practically valuable for UK practice owners navigating both NHS and private practice dynamics.

24. Ashley Latter | Ashley Latter Consulting

Ashley Latter began his career at the Dale Carnegie Training Organisation, where he spent time in sales, as a four-course instructor, and as an International Master Trainer, before bringing that communication expertise to the specific context of dental practice. His coaching with dental practices across the UK and internationally focuses on developing world-class communication skills that create what he describes as the ultimate patient journey, helping practices move from transactional interactions to relational ones that build loyalty and increase treatment acceptance.

His most important contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the argument that communication is a leadership skill, not a marketing function. Latter consistently argues that the way a dental team communicates, with patients, with each other, and with the principal dentist, is the single most reliable predictor of whether a practice will thrive or struggle over time, regardless of its clinical quality or equipment investment.

25. Chris Barrow | CB Coaching

Chris Barrow has been coaching dental business owners in the UK for more than three decades and is, alongside Ashley Latter, one of the longest-serving and most respected voices in UK dental practice leadership. His coaching work addresses the full range of practice leadership challenges from financial management and team culture to personal leadership development and work-life integration. He co-hosts a podcast with Ashley Latter and is a regular speaker at UK and international dental conferences.

His contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the consistent integration of personal wellbeing and business performance. Barrow has been arguing since before it became fashionable that dental practice owners who sacrifice their own health, relationships, and energy for their practice are building something that will eventually collapse, and that the most sustainable leadership models are those where the owner is also thriving personally. His coaching treats leadership sustainability as a business issue, not merely a personal one.

26. Rana Al-Falaki | NAIL-IT Podcast

Rana Al-Falaki is a UK-based dentist and co-host of the NAIL-IT Podcast, which she produces alongside Bhavin Patel and which is dedicated to helping dental professionals thrive rather than simply survive. Her particular focus is on the performance and wellbeing dimensions of dental leadership: how dental professionals, who operate in an environment of extreme precision, constant patient management, and financial responsibility, can build the self-awareness, energy management, and leadership capacity to sustain a career over decades without burning out.

Her most significant contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the reframing of burnout as a leadership and systems failure rather than a personal weakness. Al-Falaki's work argues that the conditions that produce dental burnout, unclear expectations, poor team communication, absence of recovery time, and absence of meaning, are all leadership-addressable. Her NAIL-IT programme is built around optimising energy as the foundation of both clinical performance and leadership effectiveness.

27. Bhavin Patel | NAIL-IT Podcast

Bhavin Patel is a UK-based dentist, practice owner, and co-host of the NAIL-IT Podcast. Having built and led a practice before stepping back to reprioritise his personal life, he brings a perspective on dental practice leadership that is unusual in its honesty about the personal costs of conventional definitions of success. His contributions to the NAIL-IT Podcast address the specific challenges of leading a clinical team while managing the psychological demands of dentistry, including perfectionism, the emotional labour of constant patient contact, and the difficulty of making leadership decisions when the leader is also the primary producer.

His contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the argument that knowing yourself is a prerequisite to leading others effectively, and that the self-awareness practices that make a dentist a better leader are the same ones that make them a more resilient and fulfilled practitioner. Patel and Al-Falaki together represent one of the most thoughtful voices in the UK dental leadership space on the integration of performance and wellbeing.

28. Viren Patel DDS | Smile Obsession

Viren Patel leads Smile Obsession in the UK and has been a featured panellist at major dental leadership events including the CLA Dental Leadership Summit 2025, where he represented the dentist-led group practice perspective in a conversation about the future of group dentistry. His work building a dentist-led group practice in the UK market, which has a distinct set of regulatory, financial, and cultural constraints compared to the US DSO environment, makes his perspective particularly valuable for practitioners outside North America exploring group practice models.

His contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the ground-level UK group practice perspective: what does it actually look like to build a dentist-led organisation in a market shaped by NHS legacy structures, private practice economics, and a patient population with different expectations and relationships with dental care than their US counterparts? His active presence at international dental leadership events has amplified this perspective.

29. Leila Haywood DDS | Brisbane, Australia

Leila Haywood practises cosmetic and family dentistry in Brisbane, Australia, and has established herself as one of the most recognised dental practice leadership voices in the Australian market. Her work spans clinical excellence and practice management, and her visibility on dental industry platforms reflects the growing recognition that Australian dentistry, which operates under its own distinct regulatory and funding environment, produces leadership perspectives that are worth paying attention to internationally.

Her contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the Australian market perspective: the dynamics of building a private practice in a market without the US insurance infrastructure or the UK's NHS legacy, one where the business model has always been closer to fee-for-service and where patient experience and practice culture are the primary competitive differentiators. Australian dental leaders navigating these dynamics have much to offer the global leadership conversation.

Category 6: Women Shaping Dental Leadership

The representation of women in dental practice leadership has improved significantly over the past decade, driven in part by organisations like Women In DSO, the growing number of female practice owners, and the voices of leaders who have actively made female advancement in the profession a professional priority. The leaders in this category have not only built successful practices and careers, they have done so in ways that make it more possible for the women who come after them.

30. ArNelle Wright DMD | Oral Health & Wellness of Oviedo

Known to her social media community as The Daily Dentist, ArNelle Wright DMD MS is a general dentist, practice owner, speaker, and one of the most active voices for underrepresented practitioners in organised dentistry at both state and national level. A triple Gator graduate from the University of Florida and a recognised mentor in the UF dental community, she has served in leadership roles with the Florida Dental Association and the American Dental Association. The University of Florida Alumni Association recognised her as one of its 40 Gators Under 40.

Her contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the consistent argument that clinical excellence and leadership development are inseparable, and that the dentist who neglects one will eventually compromise both. Wright's content addresses the particular challenges faced by underrepresented practitioners in accessing leadership development resources, mentorship networks, and the kind of financial and business education that makes practice ownership viable and sustainable.

31. Bethany Piziks DDS | Amplified Dynamics

Bethany Piziks practised clinical dentistry for more than 20 years before making her life's work the support of other dental professionals in finding the balance, peace, and prosperity that she found herself searching for during her own career. As founder of Amplified Dynamics, speaker, leadership consultant, and organiser of dental retreats, she brings a perspective on dental practice leadership that takes the personal and professional dimensions of the work equally seriously.

Her most significant contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the explicit validation that the challenges of dental practice ownership, the isolation, the financial pressure, the difficulty of leading a team while also being the primary producer, are genuine and legitimate, not signs of weakness. Piziks has built a coaching practice around the premise that the most successful dental leaders are those who have learned to lead themselves before trying to lead their practices. Her book coaching experience drew from starting a practice from scratch in 1997 and hiring her own coach to transform her results.

32. Lauren Gueits | Women In DSO

Lauren Gueits leads Women In DSO, the most prominent community dedicated to advancing women in the dental support organisation sector, and in doing so has created infrastructure that did not exist a decade ago for women navigating executive careers in group dentistry. Her work with the Women In DSO community builds the networks, mentorship relationships, and professional development opportunities that help women at every stage of a dental career identify the path to leadership roles in organisations where those paths have historically been less visible.

Her contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the argument that the dental industry as a whole, patients, practices, and organisations, benefits from the advancement of women in leadership, and that creating the conditions for that advancement is both a justice issue and a business strategy. The Women In DSO platform she has built is evidence that investing in professional community around gender equity in dental leadership produces measurable career outcomes for its members.

33. Wardah Inam | Overjet

Wardah Inam leads Overjet, the dental AI company that has become one of the most discussed technology platforms in the dental industry, and in doing so has made herself one of the most visible voices on the intersection of artificial intelligence, clinical decision-making, and dental practice leadership. Her appearance on the Incisal Edge 32 Most Influential People in Dentistry list reflects the growing recognition that AI leadership in dentistry is itself a form of practice leadership, shaping how practices diagnose, communicate, and make clinical decisions at scale.

Her contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the consistent argument that AI in dentistry is not replacing clinical judgement but augmenting it, and that the practice leaders who will benefit most from this transition are those who develop the literacy to evaluate AI tools critically rather than adopting them uncritically or avoiding them entirely. Inam's work at Overjet has made AI clinical decision support accessible to a significant portion of the US dental market.

Category 7: The Community Builders and Media Leaders

These are the thought leaders who have built the platforms, communities, and media ecosystems through which dental practice leadership knowledge travels. In a profession where continuing education has historically been focused almost entirely on clinical skills, they have created the infrastructure for leadership and business development learning to become normal and expected parts of a dental career.

34. Elijah Desmond | Dental Podfest

Elijah Desmond began his professional life as a youth motivational speaker at the age of 15 and has brought that energy and commitment to building community to his work in the dental industry. As co-owner of Dental Pitch Brokerage and founder of Dental Podfest, the premier event for the next generation of dental entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, speakers, podcasters, and brand builders, he has created a platform specifically designed for those who want to take their dental expertise beyond the operatory and into the broader leadership conversation.

His contribution to the dental leadership conversation is the democratisation of dental thought leadership itself: by creating infrastructure for dental professionals to build their voices, communities, and platforms, Desmond has expanded the number of people contributing to the profession's leadership conversation. His work reflects an understanding that leadership in dentistry is not just a matter of individual practice owners making better decisions, it is a matter of the profession as a whole developing a richer, more diverse intellectual culture.

35. Jonno White | Clarity Group Global

The thinkers on this list are the readers. Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold globally, is the person you bring in when you are ready to do something with what they are saying. As a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, keynote speaker, and team facilitator who has worked with organisations across Australia, the UK, USA, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, India, and beyond, Jonno works with leadership teams in healthcare and professional services to build the culture foundations that make every other leadership investment more effective.

His facilitation of Working Genius, the world's fastest growing team assessment completed by more than 1.3 million people globally in less than five years, gives dental practice leadership teams a practical, immediate language for understanding why they work the way they do, where their energy drains are coming from, and how to design their team structure to get the best out of every person in the practice. His podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured more than 230 episodes across 150 countries, and his 93.75 percent satisfaction rating at the ASBA 2025 National Conference reflects the practical impact of his facilitation.

To work with Jonno, email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel for speaking and facilitation engagements is often far more affordable than organisations expect.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several people were seriously considered for this list but did not make the final 35. Howard Farran, founder of Dentaltown.com, is one of the most recognisable names in dentistry and the creator of a platform that has served the profession for decades; his focus has shifted significantly toward social media content and product promotion in recent years, making his contribution to the leadership conversation less central than it once was. Bill Dorfman brings extraordinary visibility and a genuine commitment to patient education, but his content is primarily broadcast-oriented rather than leadership-focused.

Stanley Bergman of Henry Schein is one of the most consequential figures in the dental industry's history, but his contribution is primarily at the corporate and policy level rather than at the practice leadership level this list addresses. Michael Dinsio and Paula Quinn of Next Level Consultants produce genuinely valuable practice management coaching content through their Dental Unscripted podcast, but their LinkedIn presence and content output were at the time of research less consistent than others on the final list. Stephenie Goddard of Glidewell and her Guiding Leaders programme were a very close consideration and deserve mention for the significant investment Glidewell has made in developing the next generation of dental leaders.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Learning from Dental Leadership Thought Leaders

The most common mistake dental practitioners make when engaging with leadership thought leadership is consuming it without a plan for implementation. Dental podcasts, summits, and masterminds produce an enormous volume of high-quality content, and the practitioners who get the most out of them are not the ones who consume the most but the ones who commit to implementing one specific idea before consuming the next. The pattern of learning without doing is so common in the dental professional development space that it has a name: conference high. It describes the motivation spike that follows a summit or retreat and disappears within two weeks when implementation proves harder than inspiration.

A second common mistake is assuming that leadership frameworks from outside dentistry do not apply to dental practices because dentistry is somehow different. It is not as different as practitioners often tell themselves. The EOS model, Working Genius, DISC, Gallup StrengthsFinder, and similar frameworks have been applied successfully in dental practices of all sizes and models, and the practitioners who have done so consistently report that the structure these frameworks provide is exactly what their practices needed. The idea that dentistry requires a proprietary leadership language has served the dental consulting industry well, but it has not always served practices well.

A third mistake is following voices who confirm your existing beliefs rather than seeking out the voices that challenge them. The most valuable contribution on this list is not the one whose ideas you already agree with. It is the one who makes you uncomfortable enough to think differently. The contrarian perspectives, the rehumanisation argument, the wellbeing-as-leadership-strategy argument, the team-member-experience-first argument, tend to receive less engagement precisely because they require more from the leader than simply implementing a new script or system.

A fourth mistake, particularly for practice owners who are considering group practice models, is consuming DSO leadership content without first being honest about what kind of leader they currently are. Scaling a dental group amplifies existing leadership culture, for better and for worse. The practice owner who has not yet built clear communication systems, accountability structures, and a genuine team culture in a single practice will not suddenly develop those capacities by opening a second location.

A fifth mistake is dismissing international voices because the regulatory and business environment is different. The UK dental leadership conversation, and to a growing degree the Australian one, addresses dimensions of practice leadership that are underrepresented in US-dominated content: the management of practices that combine NHS obligations with private ambitions, the specific dynamics of an independent practice culture that has resisted corporate consolidation more successfully than the US market, and the wellbeing and burnout dimensions of dental leadership that the UK profession has engaged with more directly than some other markets.

Implementation Guide: Taking Action on What You Read and Hear

The starting point for most practitioners is not finding the right thought leader but developing a practice of actively engaging with one. Subscribe to one podcast rather than twelve, and commit to listening to every episode for a month before deciding whether it is worth continuing. The Thriving Dentist Show with Gary Takacs, The Dentalpreneur Podcast with Mark Costes, and the Dental Leaders Podcast hosted by Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki are three of the best starting points, each with a different focus and a different audience but all consistently high quality.

The next step is community. The most common observation among dental practice owners who have made significant leadership progress is that it happened inside a community, not through content consumption alone. The Dentist Entrepreneur Organisation, the Dental Success Network, and the Academy of Dental Office Managers all offer structured communities where practitioners can share challenges, test ideas, and hold each other accountable in ways that a podcast or book cannot replicate. The investment in community membership is typically a fraction of the cost of a single staff turnover event.

For practices that are ready to go deeper, the structured coaching and assessment tools recommended by multiple voices on this list, including Working Genius for team dynamics, DISC for communication styles, and the various leadership assessment tools offered by the Team Training Institute and Blatchford Solutions, offer the kind of specific, actionable insight that general content rarely provides. These tools work best when facilitated by someone who can help the team apply the results to their specific context rather than simply generating a report.

The timeline for leadership development in a dental practice is measured in years, not months, and the practices that make the most progress are those where the owner commits to one framework, one set of principles, or one community for long enough to experience compound returns. Changing coaches every six months, pivoting to a new system before the current one is implemented, or chasing the newest idea from every conference is the leadership equivalent of changing your hygiene protocol every quarter. The results will reflect the inconsistency. Choose a direction, invest in it seriously, and measure the results before changing course.

If you are ready to take your team's leadership culture from reactive to intentional, Jonno White delivers keynotes, workshops, and executive offsite facilitation for dental and healthcare leadership teams around the world. His keynote Building a High-Performing Team: Creating a Culture That Soars gives dental leadership teams practical frameworks they can use from Monday morning. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss how Jonno can support your next leadership event, offsite, or team development programme.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the most influential voices in dental practice leadership in 2026?

The most consistently influential voices in dental practice leadership in 2026 include Mark Costes of the Dental Success Network, Roger Levin of the Levin Group, Gary Takacs of the Takacs Learning Center, Payman Langroudi of the Dental Leaders Podcast, and ArNelle Wright DMD, each of whom reaches tens of thousands of dental professionals through podcasts, coaching programmes, and published content. The full list of 35 voices profiled in this guide represents the broadest and most diverse current picture of the field.

What makes dental practice leadership different from other small business leadership?

The clinician-to-leader transition is the defining challenge: the dentist who owns a practice has typically received years of clinical training and zero leadership development, and is expected to hire, manage, develop, and retain a team while also being the primary revenue generator in the business. This dual demand creates a leadership context that is genuinely distinct from other small business environments. Research consistently shows that the single most common reason dental practices struggle financially is not clinical quality but operational and people management challenges.

What leadership frameworks work best in dental practices?

Several general leadership frameworks have been applied with significant success in dental practices, including the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Working Genius assessment, DISC personality assessments, and various accountability and meeting rhythm systems. The most important factor is consistent implementation rather than which framework is chosen: the practices that improve most are those that commit to one approach for long enough to see compound results.

How was this list compiled?

This list was compiled by assessing each person's genuine contribution to the field of dental practice leadership through the quality, consistency, and reach of their published content, the scale of the communities they serve, and the recognition they have received from professional organisations and peer practitioners. The selection process prioritised geographic diversity across English-language markets, disciplinary diversity spanning practice coaching, DSO leadership, team culture, technology, and women's leadership, and a balance of established authorities and emerging voices.

Can I hire someone to facilitate leadership development workshops for my dental team?

Yes. Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold globally, delivers leadership workshops, Working Genius facilitation, team offsites, and keynote presentations for dental and healthcare leadership teams globally. He works with organisations in Australia, the UK, USA, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, and beyond, and international travel for speaking and facilitation engagements is often far more affordable than practices expect.

Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss your team's needs.

What is the best dental leadership podcast to start with?

The answer depends on your current stage. For practice owners focused on profitability and scaling, The Dentalpreneur Podcast with Mark Costes and The Thriving Dentist Show with Gary Takacs are the most consistently valuable. For UK practitioners and those interested in the human dimensions of dental leadership, the Dental Leaders Podcast with Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki is exceptional. For team culture and office management, the Dental A Team Podcast with Kiera Dent and the NAIL-IT Podcast with Rana Al-Falaki and Bhavin Patel address dimensions that most other dental podcasts undercover.

Why is burnout so prevalent in dental leadership, and what do thought leaders say about it?

Dental burnout is prevalent because the profession creates a unique combination of stress factors: physical precision, constant patient management, financial responsibility, and leadership demands, all occurring simultaneously without recovery periods built into the workday. The most progressive dental leadership thinkers, including Rana Al-Falaki, Bhavin Patel, Bethany Piziks, and Chuck Blakeman, reframe burnout not as an individual weakness but as a leadership and systems failure that can be addressed through culture design, operational boundaries, and the kind of self-awareness practices that make sustainable leadership possible.

Final Thoughts

The dental profession is producing better leaders than it ever has. The explosion of community, content, coaching, and conversation around dental practice leadership in the last decade reflects a genuine maturation in how the profession thinks about what it means to build a practice that is excellent for patients, sustainable for owners, and genuinely good to work in for teams. The 35 voices profiled in this guide represent the vanguard of that maturation.

The most important thing you can do with this list is not follow all 35 people. It is to choose one whose perspective challenges you in the direction you most need to grow, and to engage with their ideas seriously enough that they actually change something in how you lead. Leadership development in dental practice is not a passive exercise. It is a repeated decision to do the uncomfortable work of changing your own thinking and behaviour before asking your team to change theirs.

Jonno White, experienced keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, and Certified Working Genius Facilitator completing the world's fastest growing team assessment with leadership teams globally, works with dental and healthcare organisations who are ready to build the culture that makes everything else work better. To bring Jonno to your team, email jonno@consultclarity.org. Many organisations find that international travel for speaking and facilitation is far more affordable than they expected.

His book Step Up or Step Out, available on Amazon, addresses the difficult conversations and accountability challenges that dental practice leaders consistently identify as their hardest leadership problems.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits across the UK, India, Australia, Canada, Mongolia, New Zealand, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, USA, Finland, Namibia, and more. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Next Read: 35 Essential Thought Leaders in Hospital Leadership Globally (2026)

Dental practice leadership does not happen in isolation. The team dynamics, communication challenges, and accountability gaps that dental leaders face every day are the same ones that any leadership team faces, and the frameworks developed in the broader world of leadership development apply directly. For more on how the most effective leadership teams build the culture that sustains their results, read on.

Hospital leadership is arguably the most complex leadership challenge on the planet. Few other settings demand that leaders simultaneously manage clinical safety, workforce wellbeing, financial sustainability, technological transformation, regulatory compliance, and community health outcomes, all while operating around the clock. The thought leaders profiled in that guide represent the collective intelligence of global hospital leadership across every major discipline and geography.

Keep reading: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-hospital-leadership-global