Your outcome depends on your provider’s experience.

The Path to Implant Dentistry

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with how things worked. I loved working with my hands and used to take things apart — first toys, then computers, then cars. I have also been drawn to art all my life. I knew early on that whatever I did for work would have to involve all of that: my hands, my curiosity, my eye for aesthetics, and my genuine interest in people. Dentistry turned out to be the place where those things come together most naturally.

I am a native of North Carolina and proud to have done my training at the dental school in Chapel Hill. After graduating in 1996, I had a choice most new dentists do not think to make: rather than jump straight into practice, I joined the U.S. Public Health Service as a commissioned officer and headed to New Mexico to work in a dental clinic on the Navajo reservation. I got several years’ worth of clinical experience in that single year — the kind of volume and variety that you simply cannot replicate in a traditional early-career setting. It shaped how I work and how I think about patient care.

When I returned to Charlotte, my wife Lisa — who is a dental hygienist — and I established Adult Dentistry of Ballantyne in 1999. A few years later, we started our family. Lisa and I are fortunate to have three children who make life busy, loud, and genuinely fun. I hope one day one of them joins me in dentistry — that is a few years off yet, so we will have to wait and see.