The Way Forward

Charting a course for more women in industry leadership roles

By Lori Noga, DMD, Founder & CEO of Tranquility Dental Wellness

Working in a male-dominated space is not a new dynamic to me.

Before I entered dentistry, I worked as an actuary, navigating my career through corporate America.

Medicine appealed to me. But so did work/life balance. I wanted to be able to have a career but also have flexibility to spend time with my family and kids. Ultimately that was a determining factor in choosing to enroll at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in Boston. This was over 15 years ago. I was part of the first class in school history to have more women than men. The ratio wasn’t large – we barely tipped the scale at 51% to 49% – but it did signal the beginning of a trend.

Where has that trend landed us more than a decade later? My own experiences throughout lead me to believe we’ve made progress, but we still have plenty of work to do. After dental school, I went into the Navy (another male-dominated space) as a dental officer to complete my obligations for the military scholarship I earned in dental school. Upon completing my time in the Navy, my husband and I moved to his hometown in western Washington, and I was on the hunt for a practice to buy.

I worked hard at networking, trying to get my name out there in the dental space, and I even had an “in” in the community. My fatherin-law was a long-standing dentist in the town we moved to. But even with the connections he would give me, I was still being shut out. At the time, I never thought of it as a gender bias. But no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible to get a foot in the door.

Eventually, I decided to do a startup. My office was born out of frustration with the system. I know I’m not alone. When I look back at my graduating class from dental school, it is jam-packed with like-minded women who went the start-up route rather than becoming part of a group practice or buying one.

There could be many factors to that. Women go into the dental field because they want to have more control over their time and their careers. Personally, I felt like if I built my own office, I would control my own schedule. I could make it work around my life. I felt empowered to create my own future. And I couldn’t wait to create opportunity for my future team to be empowered and offer a