ON THE TABLE

ON THE TABLE

Speedway General Manager Mark Faber Takes the Wheel

The new Texas Motor Speedway leader plans to grow impact through community outreach and diversified events at the largest venue in Texas.

story by BEN SWANGER

illustration by JAKE MEYERS

life has been like drinking from a fire hose the past few months, says new Texas Motor Speedway Executive Vice President and General Manager Mark Faber, as we settle into a booth at the Starwood Cafe in Trophy Club for breakfast. I opt for the chicken and waffles; Faber goes with a modest bowl of oatmeal. The selection mirrors where he stands in life; he simply does not want to bite offmore than he can chew—just yet.

Faber is setting 2023 financial guidance and goals, analyzing personnel, and laying the foundation for where he wants to take The Great American Speedway—all while still trying to find a home in North Texas after relocating from Las Vegas in August 2022. But Faber—the second general manager in as many years—has a tall task ahead. He must fill the hole, financially and socially that NASCAR’s All-Star weekend left when Speedway Motorsports moved the event from Fort Worth to North Carolina for 2023. According to the Fort Worth Sports Commission, events like the AllStar Race bring in around $100 million in direct spending for the region.

“It’s important to grow TMS’s revenue, but it’s also important to grow the region’s tax revenue through new events,” Faber says. “This now gives us the opportunity to do that. We recently signed a multi-year partnership with IndyCar, and it is important we become the second home for that.”

Texas Motor Speedway pushed the envelope in tech by showcasing an autonomous IndyCar exhibition race on the circuit this past November. “There’s nothing cooler than watching new innovation drive around the track,” Faber says. The venue will also host a NASCAR Truck Series event and an IndyCar Series race in 2023, alongside its two signature NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series races.

Faber cut his teeth with the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s, directing sales efforts for sponsorships, events, hospitality, and luxury suites. His most recent post was with Anschutz Entertainment Group as the senior vice president of global partnerships working with Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena—the $375 million NHL arena that opened in 2016. In 2019, T-Mobile Arena was the highest-grossing concert venue in the U.S. (with capacities of more than 15,000), reporting $164.4 million.

Faber hopes to continue his success with his allstar cast at Texas Motor Speedway. “TMS’s group has been recognized as one of the top corporate sales units in the country by Speedway Motorsports,” Faber says. “But I have a bigger goal of offering a fully integrated solution to collectively improve our community through corporate sales, ticketing, human resources, employee rewards or recruitment, and the Speedway Children’s Charities—with a focus on aiding trafficking and abuse.”

Faber is also ready to “reverse the trend” of athome sports viewing, with people getting comfortable on their couches during the pandemic. “We’re making enhancements to our concert lineup, trackside fan activations, and other extra entertainment,” he says.

Fort Worth’s concrete kingdom venue has generated an annual estimated economic impact of $300 million since 1997 and hosts approximately 300 events—from high-profile NASCAR races to high school proms—a year. Where Faber is looking to make a lasting an impact, though, is in diverse communities. “We’re working with the Mexican Consulate and area media partners to grow outreach to Hispanic and other multicultural communities. Increasing ticket sales is great, but how can we make a difference beyond racing?”

THE INNOVATION AWARDS 2023

THE portraits by JONATHAN ZIZZO POWER

story by

KELSEY J. VANDERSCHOOT OF

opener by

DAN SAELINGER

When faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, these four North Texas innovators refused to give up. Here's how they're helping shape the future.

THE JOURNEY FROM “AHA” MOMENT TO MARKET LAUNCH IS RARELY LINEAR. OBSTACLES IN SCALING, IMPLEMENTATION, FUNDING, AND MORE ABOUND, AND AN ABILITY TO ADAPT AND STAY THE COURSE IS ESSENTIAL.

“Resilience is the ability to draw a straight line made up of crooked marks,” says Mance Harmon, co-founder of North Texas-based Distributed ledger tech company Hedera Hashgraph. He and the 67 other finalits and winners in The Innovation Awards 2023, presented by D CEO in partnership with Dallas Innovates, have shown many forms of resiliency throughout their journeys to creating products and technology that are shaping our future. The leaders have shown an ability to beat the odds, take risks, pivot, persist, and more. Here, you’ll read more about how our four individual category winners have definedand practiced resilience throughout their careers.

DAVID C. WILLIAMS, AT&T

“We grew up poor, just to put it out there,” David C. Williams says about his upbringing in South Dallas. The assistant vice president of automation for AT&T remembers his dad often challenging him to read extensively before he committed suicide when Williams was 8 years old. After that, Williams watched his mother and sister sufferfinancial,medical, and emotional hardship. “As a kid, so many people are taught how to make $1 out of 15 cents,” he says. “A dollar out of 15 cents is a 600 percent ROI, and if any of us could take that ingenuity that mama taught us for 18 to 20 years of our life and apply it in our careers, we could go do something amazing.”

That’s exactly what Williams has tried to do since high school, when he firt realized there was nothing he couldn’t achieve with a little hard work. His sophomore year, he was left to lead an ROTC team whose former leaders all graduated. “I’m coming offa championship year, and I didn’t want to let anyone down,” Williams recalls. He threw himself into the effot—cleaning rifflesshining boots, pressing uniforms, and learning every drill move for every position on the team. “I just went to the nth degree, and I poured myself into that, and I think I haven’t changed since then,” he says.

After earning a marketing degree from Dallas Baptist University, Williams held several roles in operations for AT&T. With one hand, he says, he was learning the tasks of each role, and with the other, innovating to make each function easier and more efficient“I started small, working on things that were close to me,” he says.

Williams rose to director level in 2014 and in 2020 solved one of the company’s biggest challenges: allowing customer service reps to work from home without exposing sensitive consumer information. “Although the government said, ‘Work

AT&T executive David C. Williams was an award winner at the Black Engineer of the Year Awards 2021.

from home or shelter in place,’ the FCC said, ‘That’s cool, but you can’t make a sale, because you can’t process a credit card or a social security number through home-based employees,’” Williams says. By repurposing a few app program interfaces, he created a way for customers to communicate sensitive information to 40,000 employees via a secure text channel that confirmedidentity and processed payment, without the rep seeing any identifying information.

Now, as the leader of the largest robot- DOUBLING ics process automation program world- DOWN ON wide, Williams oversees roughly 150 emDIVERSITY ployees who drive a 5,000 percent annual AT&T's David C. ROI. The team reached nearly $800 mil- Williams has made lion in operating income for 2022—an as- diversity a key part tounding fivfold increase over 2021. of his leadership and hiring strategies.

And Williams has no plans to slow (Roughly 3 percent down. He has an even bigger trick up his of U.S. engineers are sleeve that will debut in spring 2023. “I Black.) “When I think about resiliency, I think figuredout a way to drive out the non-ef- about The Avengers— ficientcomponents of customer service the most resilient team and simplifiedit,” he says. He is quiet on we probably know of—doing the things specificsbut says the project is in pilot that they do. None of mode in Houston and will begin scal- them look alike. They ing in the firt quarter of the year. Wildon’t come from the same background. liams believes it will quickly extend be- They have different yond customer service and even beyond talents and skills, but AT&T. “The savings are too massive for they respect each other’s talents and any industry to avoid,” Williams says. “It skills as they try to is the greatest thing I’ve ever worked on solve the biggest in my entire career.” problems in the world. From my perspective, resiliency is often a call to double down ANDREW BENDER, DZS on diversity; to me, diversity in tech works “A journey of seeing the internet grow up.” exponentially well.” It would also be Bender’s firt time in a C-suite seat. That’s how Andrew Bender describes his “Rebuilding, creating from scratch, making something career. The chief technology officeof Pla- new—that’s what we’ve done over the last two years,” no-based broadband connection company DZS left VMware, Bender says, “and it looks like it’s working from a metrics pera multibillion-dollar global corporation, to take on his current spective.” DZS reported net revenue of $107 million for Q3 role in 2020. “A lot of challenges, a lot of unknowns, and some in 2022. risk factors there,” Bender says of the time when he made the While Bender was adjusting to his new role, demand for leap of faith. “But to be honest, that background of uncertainty broadband connectivity was skyrocketing, with reliable interwas everywhere.” net becoming essential for remote learning, work from home,

The task for Bender at DZS required moving some sizeable and more. “Many times, the network wasn’t ready,” Bender mountains: The company was transitioning its headquarters says. R&D without filledwhiteboards and in-person collaborafrom the Oakland area in California, to Plano while ironing tion became a must, and Bender’s team had to adapt. out the infrastructure needed to run a global company after “We had changed everything we did to keep the business nearly 20 years of growth through mergers and acquisitions. running,” he says. “Resilience is how you navigate these chang-

Throughout his career, Andrew Bender has helped integrate several new technologies into society.

“IF YOU’RE STILL IN YOUR HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGE, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE PART OF THE NEW SOCIETY.”

ANDREW BENDER | DZS es, and success really depends on having a willingness to consider and devise new ways of doing things, because whether it’s the pandemic, or going from paper to digital, if you’re still in your horse drawn carriage, you’re not going to be part of the new society.”

Having helped society transition to new technology through his work at companies including Tekelec, NEC Corp., and Hewlett Packard—even working in early iterations of broadband technology at Manhattan-based ThruPoint during Y2K— Bender is now ready to help push the envelope again at DZS. The company recently completed a succession of product launches, including new hardware that transports hundreds of gigabits or terabits of bandwidth and a new transport switch system that aggregates traffiin multi-gigabit fibe optic networks. “Optical broadband going to gigabit, then multi-gigabit, and now 50-100 gigabit into everybody’s home is going to be possible over the coming years, making 5G a reality,” Bender says.

Now, it’s time to help the community embrace these new products, while continuing to execute and innovate. “I think we can’t stop,” Bender says. “That’s really the expectation of our customers, and the industry, and the markets. Now, we still need to do some of the hard work of bringing those things into reality—helping customers operationalize, embrace, and implement the technology.” He adds, “It’s one thing to make a product, or a contraption, or demonstrate technology. It’s another to get it deployed out there on a national, or on a global, basis.” His forward focus? “Creating that software-driven network in a nutshell is what we’re going to be focused on for the next several years.”

TRICIA D’CRUZ, CATALYZE DALLAS

Early in her career as a software engineer, Tricia D’Cruz faced the possibility of the company she worked for going out of business. The now founder and managing director of holding company Catalyze Dallas was serving as software director for North Texas-based telecommunications firmEfficien Networks in the ’90s when flt ethernet cables hit the market, rendering the product her team was working on useless. “We were doing local area networking technology. It was called ATM to the desktop,” D’Cruz says. “You’ve never heard of that, because it’s not a thing anymore.”

Her team could have folded she says, but instead, they repurposed the tech toward high-speed internet. “That company ended up becoming world No. 1 market share position for the little box that goes in your closet for high-speed internet, based on the same technology that had failed originally,” D’Cruz says. Efficien Networks subsequently was acquired by Siemens for $1.5 billion in 2002, but not before D’Cruz led its products divisions through an IPO in 1999 and a twoyear revenue explosion from $3 million to $200 million. She became president and general manager of Siemens’ Access Solutions division after the acquisition.

From there, D’Cruz held a division leadership role at Plano-based Tekelec, a global internet tech supplier, before founding and scaling numerous startups, and through her consulting firmVectorPoint helped high-tech companies grow. Having seen the scaling process through corporate and startup vantages, she realized she wanted to continue to bring new technology to market but “reduce risk and go fast.”

At the same time, D’Cruz and her husband, Joe, realized there was a lot of non-strategic intellectual property owned by corporations that did not wish to scale the tech they ideated. “They develop all sorts of really amazing technology, and some of it just doesn’t end up hitting the light of day through their processes for all sorts of different reasons, especially through M&A,” D’Cruz says. She realized if she could acquire tech at the go-tomarket stage, she would be getting heavily tested products that could be brought to market quickly.

She began by acquiring an aerospace drag technology from Lockheed Martin, which she used to form Dallas-based Metro Aerospace in 2016. The company uses the tech to help commercial and military planes flymore effetively by reducing fuel consumption. It took only two months from the agreement with Lockheed Martin to firt product launch. Three years later, D’Cruz formed Alpine Advanced Materials, a Dallas-based engineering firmthat uses tech purchased from Lockheed to manufacture lightweight parts for planes.

Just as things were getting underway, the pandemic hit. “We had contracts underway with some really significantcommercial aerospace manufacturers to develop product, and all of that vaporized,” D’Cruz says. But her team bounced back by focusing more on space and defense and less on air travel. Catalyze Dallas recently closed a deal with consulting giant IBM and spun-out Almaden Genomics in 2022, a company focused on making it easier to analyze the human genome. “I feel like we’re just hitting our stride, where we’re going to be starting companies on a on a more regular cadence,” D’Cruz says. “We have more capital to put to bear, so we can start some more capital-intensive projects as well. I’m super excited about what we will be doing in the next few years.”

HUBERT ZAJICEK, HEALTH WILDCATTERS

Austrian native Hubert Zajicek’s journey to U.S. citizenship Catalyze Dallas founder and leader Tricia D’Cruz has made a career of founding and scaling startups.

Hubert Zajicek fought for his U.S. citizenship prior to leading accelerator Healthcare Wildcatters.

was far from straightforward. He and his American wife showed up at the consulate in Vienna with two packed suitcases for his green card interview. In the bags were eight years of phone records, samplings from more than 100 letters, photo albums—every shred of evidence that he and his wife had to prove their multicultural marriage was real.

The now CEO of Dallas-based healthcare accelerator Health Wildcatters sailed through that part of the process. But then he experienced many challenges that, at one point, had him camping overnight at the Dallas INS officeAfter jumping through hoops, Zajicek finallygot help from a congressman, just as the stamp on his passport was about to expire.

Nearly 20 years after immigrating, the M.D. put that same ingenuity and tenacity to work at NTEC, a Frisco-based healthcare incubator. There, he connected with three colleagues who wanted to create a space where healthcare entrepreneurs could grow and be mentored by investors with the hope of one day scaling their startups. “Accelerators had been around, but not those that specialized in a certain industry,” Zajicek says. The four honed in on a sustainable model. “Corporations, economic development organizations, or universities, have entities that will push innovation further, and potentially even create startups, and that’s cool. But they are generally spending money doing that,” Zajicek says. Rather than a board or governing entity, the group relies entirely on funds from private angel investors, sponsors, and family office to support their program. Investors also invest in founder or common shares, rather than preferred shares. This higher-risk investment helps build trust from the start. “We put ourselves in the same shoes as these startup entrepreneurs on purpose,” Zajicek says. “We raised our firt fund, and off we went” In the past decade or so, Health Wildcatters has accelerated an impressive 99 startups, that have raised a quarter billion dollars total, and seen some of its alumni go on through successful exits and a Nasdaq IPO. The latter came from Dallas-based Lantern Pharma, a biopharmaceutical company focused around clinical-stage oncology. It raised $26.3 million when it went public in 2020 and now has a market cap of more than $55 million. Christopher Crow, leader of Plano-based Catalyst Health Network, Dave Copps, co-founder and CEO of North-Texas AI startup Worlds, Elyse Dickerson, co-founder and CEO of Fort Worth earcare company Eosera, and Lea Ellermeier, founder and CEO of several dental startups in North Texas, are among curent mentors at Health Wildcatters. Zajicek says the process builds trust and resiliency, with investors having to trust that a return will be coming and entrepreneurs needing to trust in the mentorship and guidance that they receive, knowing funding may be difficult to secure. “In the startup life, you’re going to have to knock on many doors to get the check,” Zajicek says. “They have to understand that they cannot let those things get to them.” He’s optimistic about the future, even in the face of a potential recession. “I’m fairly bullish on the fact that the people who invest in private deals understand that it’s a long term play,” he says.

THE INNOVATION AWARDS

INDIVIDUAL CATEGORIES COMPANY CATEGORIES

CIO/CTO OF THE YEAR

Andrew Bender, DZS Finalist: Chris Akeroyd, Children’s Health

CORPORATE INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR

David C. Williams, AT&T Finalists: Matt Heydon, Toyota Financial Services; Alok Maskara, Lennox International; Heidi Soltis- Berner, Deloitte

INNOVATION ADVOCATE OR ACCELERATOR LEADER OF THE YEAR

Hubert Zajicek, Health Wildcatters Finalists: Trey Bowles, Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth; Cameron Cushman, The University of North Texas Health Science Center; Tarsha Hearns, The DEC Network at Redbird; Jennifer Sampson, United Way of Metropolitan Dallas

INNOVATIVE LEADER OF THE YEAR

Tricia D’Cruz, Catalyze Dallas Finalists: George Baker Sr., ParkHub; Dave Copps, Worlds; Ben Lamm, Colossal; Prasanna Singaraju, Qentelli; Evelyn Torres-Gomez, Solaris Technologies Services

INNOVATION IN AI AND MACHINE LEARNING

Lone Star Analysis Finalists: Access Healthcare; Oncor Electric Delivery; OxeFit; Spacee

INNOVATION IN BIOTECHNOLOGY

Caris Life Sciences Finalists: Lantern Pharma; OncoNano Medicine; Taysha Gene Therapies

INNOVATION IN CYBERSECURITY

Cyber Defense Labs Finalists: Cysiv; Island; Securonix

INNOVATION IN DLT, BLOCKCHAIN, AND CRYPTO

Hedera + Swirlds Finalists: Applied Digital; Aurox; Blockmetrix; MoneyGram International

INNOVATION IN EDUCATION

RoboKind Finalists: iStation; Perot Museum of Nature and Science; Plano Independent School District; ScholarShot; UWorld

INNOVATION IN FINANCE

Gig Wage Finalists: Bestow; Indyfin; Nada; alor

INNOVATION IN FOOD AND BEVERAGE

Darling Ingredients Finalists: 7-Eleven; OneDine; Yum! Brands; Ziosk

INNOVATION IN HEALTHCARE

Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. Finalists: Catapult Health; The Heart Center at Children’s Health; Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation; Recuro Health

INNOVATION IN MANUFACTURING AND CONSUMER GOODS

Celanese Corp. Finalists: BeautyBio; Tetra Pak; Twisted X

INNOVATION IN SAAS

Arcade Finalists: Botisimo; Spotio; Thryv

INNOVATION IN SPORTS

OpTic Gaming Finalists: GameSquare Esports; Monarc; nVenue

portrait by

NATALIE GOFF

story by

WILL MADDOX

From his home base in Dallas, Zimbabwean-American entrepreneur Sulman Ahmed aims to create the Starbucks of dentistry.

IF SULMAN AHMED didn’t race to get to the front of the lunch line at his elementary school, he didn’t eat. Such was life at St. George’s Catholic school in what was then Harare, Rhodesia. Once the servers ran out of chicken pies and sandwiches, there were no other options. Every kid had to hustle.

Ahmed hasn’t stopped. Today, he is the founder, chairman, and CEO of DECA Dental Group, which owns more than 150 dental offices in seven states operating under the Ideal Dental brand. The company recently got the attention of Blackstone, the largest alternative investment firm in the world. So how did this Zimbabwean-American come to lead a dental empire in the U.S.

HARARE HOME

Sulman Ahmed’s childhood home where he lived with his parents and younger brother and sister.

MOTHER AND SON

Sulman Ahmed and his mother at Matopos National Park in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. after arriving stateside with a single suitcase and fuzzy visions of movies and television shows like Baywatch? His life is the epitome of the American Dream, but he is focused on making others’ dreams come true, too.

Ahmed balances a salt-of-the-earth everyman personality with a vision that is no less than becoming the Starbucks of dentistry, he says. He is worldly in a way that allows him to feel as comfortable talking soccer over a beer with buddies as he is at the head of a boardroom with some of the world’s most sophisticated business minds.

Ahmed’s parents were physicians born in Pakistan and moved to what was then Rhodesia before he was born because of the financial opportunities for doctors there. The original plan was to come to Rhodesia for a couple of years and then return home, but his parents fell in love and decided to raise their family in southern Africa.

There was a small Pakistani community in Harare, but Ahmed connected with everyone. He grew up speaking Urdu with his parents and family in the home, English in school, and Shona, a local tongue, with his friends. He went to Catholic mass at school and the mosque with his Muslim family. Ahmed’s ability to assimilate and connect with his diverse classmates was one of his gifts.

“Sully was one of the lads. He didn’t stick out, but didn’t lag,” says Taffy Gutu, Ahmed’s childhood friend and classmate. “He was charming, street smart, and liked to challenge the status quo in a good way.”

Ahmed and his family lived relatively comfortably, but his world wasn’t immune to danger. He lived through the often-violent transition from White minority rule in Rhodesia to native African leadership and a name change to Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. Ahmed says he has a classmate who watched his parents get killed in over a farmland dispute while his friend hid under a bed. “Things got politically bad, and anybody who could, got out of there,” Ahmed says.

If one looks at Ahmed’s life and success today, one might think he has been executing a master plan from day one. But Ahmed will be the first to admit that there hasn’t been a master plan but a series of qualities and values that have served him well. “What I learned from my childhood is that ability to hustle or go out and do something because you can’t take it for granted that someone is going take care of you,” Ahmed says.

His journey to the United States provides a clear view of that lack of a roadmap. He decided he wanted to go to school in America but didn’t know how. In his last year of school, he walked into the U.S. Consulate in Harare and asked how he could make that happen.

The consulate employee pointed to a Barron’s college guide chained to the wall, which listed each American college and its requirements. Ahmed had seen Baywatch

“I HAVE THIS STUFF I’VE BUILT, WHICH IS GREAT, BUT IT’S NOT WORKING OUT. I REMEMBER THINKING, ‘I’M PROBABLY GOING HAVE TO FILE BANKRUPTCY.’”

SULMAN AHMED | Ideal Dental

and told the woman he wanted to go to school where the show was filmed for what are probably obvious reasons. She told him Florida (neither knew it was actually California), so he chose the University of Miami. The woman told him he needed to take the SAT; his last chance was in two weeks. He had never heard of the test and had never even taken a multiple-choice exam, but he did well enough to get into college and receive financial aid.

But before he left for the States, there would be one more wrinkle. Not much news about Florida made it to Harare, but when Gianni Versace was murdered outside his Miami mansion in 1997, a month before Ahmed was set to leave, his father told him Florida was too violent. Ahmed talked his father down, but instead decided to attend the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

AHMED REMEMBERS landing in the Jacksonville airport and getting in line at Burger King, excited to be a real American and order fast food. But when he asked for a burger and chips in his Rhodesian accent and dialect, he was told they didn’t have any. So he pointed at the chips and said they did. “Those aren’t chips; those are fries,” the employee told him. “If you want fries, just say it that way.” Welcome to America.

His first few weeks of college were anything but ideal. When he kept mentioning Baywatch to his roommate, he discovered that the nearby beach was on a completely different ocean from the show. During those early days, the culture shock and homesickness began to sink in, and he realized just how poorly planned this college adventure was. He wanted to go home.

On a call back home, his father took the pressure off Ahmed. His dad told him to treat it like a four-week vacation, and he could come home if he wanted. When the pressure was off, he began to make friends, leaned into his classes, and his homesickness abated. “There was no turning back after that,” Ahmed says.

Ahmed’s assimilation skills were growing quickly, and he soon realized that he wanted more diversity and vibrancy in his college experience, and found what he was looking for in UT Dallas. He transferred to UTD, and if not for that cross-country transition, Ahmed’s dental dynasty might not be based in North Texas. But as always, there was no master plan. “For me, it was happy-golucky,” Ahmed says. “It is all about treating people well, bringing up others through the process, and enjoying it.”

AHMED GRADUATED from UT Dallas with his eyes set on dental school, which he attended at Tufts in Boston. He was never happier than in the last few years of dental school, treating patients and connecting with them. The plan was to move back to Dallas, where his parents had since relocated, and open up a practice of his own.

After finishing school, he secured funding to purchase a dental practice in Plano from a dentist ready to retire. After working through the contractual details, he spent some time shadowing and meeting the staffat the office. On his way out one day, one of the employees mentioned the shiny new office the current owner was building.

Ahmed was under the impression that there was a non-compete clause in the contract and was worried that the new office would take patients (and thus value) from the practice he was purchasing. After meeting with his lawyer, he was able to pull out of the deal because the other dentist’s new office wasn’t disclosed in the contract.

Like his first few weeks in America, Ahmed found himself floating in despair. He returned to North Texas without a job, still troubled by mounting dental school debt and moved in with his parents in Frisco. His dreams of owning his practice right out of school were dashed upon the rocks of a dishonest dealer, but he didn’t give up.

He worked as an associate in another office but retained the vision of doing things his way. He began to notice several aspects of what we know as a standard dental business that he thought could be done better. He didn’t quite understand it yet, but he was building the foundation for DECA Dental Group (see sidebar).

After a couple of years of work and ideation, Ahmed opened his first Ideal Dental location in 2008 in Garland while buying another practice in Corinth. In the course of 15 days, Ahmed had gone from owning zero dental practices to two. Ahmed was proud to be making his dream come true, but the timing couldn’t have been worse.

As 2008 ended, the Great Recession took hold and millions lost their jobs. For many, no job meant no dental insurance. At the time, Ahmed was $3 million in debt Ideal Dental is shifting the focus to the patient.

ONE

Ideal Dental offices are open six days a week to serve those who want to plan their appointments around work or not wait through the weekend to deal with pain. It also strives to offer new patients sameday appointments.

TWO

The company schedules sameday treatments so any cavities that are discovered via a regular checkup can be immediately dealt with.

THREE

Ideal Dental brings orthodontics and other specialists inhouse to help ensure quality control and streamline things for patients. All dental work has a lifetime warranty.

FOUR

Like Starbucks, the chain seeks out highly visible retail settings to attract new customers. The ultimate goal is to be the firt to create a national dental brand.

PARTY TIME

Sulman Ahmed at his 3rd grade birthday party, surrounded by his diverse schoolmates and teachers. between school, his condo, and his business.

The startup practice wasn’t taking offas he had hoped, he was working six days a week, and at the end of 2009, he received the notice that all small business owners dread. His latest payroll checks didn’t clear the business account. So he had to move $25,000 from what was left of his personal savings to pay his employees that month.

“That was a moment where I felt like I didn’t know if I was going to make it,” Ahmed says. “I have this stuffI’ve built, which is great, but it’s not working out. I remember thinking, ‘I’m probably going have to file bankruptcy.’” But even in these darkest moments, the seeds of what would become DECA Dental were already planted, and they sprouted with a dinner at Mi Cocina in West Village.

WHEN AHMED bought the practice in Corinth, he scheduled a meeting with the other dentist at the clinic, Dr. Shalin Patel. The two met for Mambo Taxis and Tex-Mex. Patel thought he was about to be let go to cut expenses for the new practice, but Patel wasn’t going to be too disappointed if that was the case. He had become unsatisfied with the way the clinic was being run under previous ownership.

Ahmed had other plans. The two young clinicians immediately clicked, and Ahmed began laying out his vision for changing the dental industry, prioritizing the customers, and building a national brand. Patel was inspired and all in on what was to come.

“When I heard his plans, it was refreshing and re-energizing. It got me thinking the way he was thinking,” Patel says. “I didn’t know his long-term plan for me, but I was ready to run through a wall for him.”

Patel became the first dental associate in his practice, and Ahmed has stuck with his day one colleague. Today, Patel is a partner and chief medical officer for DECA Dental, focused on hiring and establishing the vision for the growing corporation. Ahmed and Patel powered through the early days of Ideal Dental, meeting in Corinth on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to discuss the concept and plans for growth and expansion. “We didn’t know we were building something special,” Patel says. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know, but there was a bond between us.”

The business made it through those hectic early years and, by 2011, was growing steadily, adding locations throughout North Texas. As Ahmed had predicted, patients found the extended schedule and focus on service attractive. Employees and dentists may have needed a bit more convincing to work hours and days they hadn’t expected to be on duty, but the proof was in the pudding,

Sulman Ahmed’s journey from Zimbabwean-American schoolboy to American dental empire CEO wasn’t always smooth and straight forward. His secret? Treating people well rather than following the master plan.

1997

Sulman Ahmed moves from Zimbabwe to Florida to attend the University of North Florida, hoping to relive the Baywatch experience.

2008

Ahmed opens the firt two Ideal Dental offices within the span of two weeks in the Dallas suburbs during the Great Recession.

2009

As millions of people across America lost their jobs and dental insurance, Ideal Dental was unable to clear payroll one month.

2012

Ahmed stops seeing patients and moves into a full-time CEO role and creates DECA Dental Group as parent company of 10 locations.

and the busy Fridays and Saturdays were opportunities to make more money.

The business continued to grow, and in 2012 Ahmed stopped seeing patients and moved into a full-time CEO role. In 2015 the company received its first outside investment, spurring even more growth. At the time, Ideal Dental had around 800 employees in the Dallas region and, in 2016, moved outside of North Texas.

But despite the growing corporate empire, Ahmed feels that it is vital that he retain ownership and that the company be clinician-led, which separates it from many dental services organizations run by MBAs and operations experts. Ahmed and Patel at the top of the C-suite give confidence to new dentist hires who may be wary of a corporate practice.

Even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic’s height, Ideal Dental kept growing, expanding into Florida. Then last year, Blackstone—the world’s largest alternative investment firm which had more than $951 billion in assets under management in the third quarter of 2022—came calling. DECA Dental received the highest multiple ever paid in the dental segment. If any ally can make Ideal Dental the Starbucks of dentistry, it’s Blackstone.

A major boon to the growth of DECA Dental following Blackstone’s investment was Ahmed’s introduction to Nigel Travis as a strategic advisor. Travis was previously the president and COO of Blockbuster as well as the CEO of both Dunkin’ Brands and Papa John’s International. He knows what it takes to build a ubiquitous brand.

Travis was struck by Ahmed’s charisma and business savvy. “He’s very disciplined and communicates everything that goes into building the business,” Travis says. “What’s attractive about Sulman is that he is not a topdown leader. He listens and gets people to participate.”

Despite brushing shoulders with corporate heavy hitters, Ahmed sees his primary goal as helping others grow alongside the company. He met Patel in his company’s earliest days and still works alongside him today. In the Corinth office, Cassie Jenkins was the original front office person. Today, she is the senior vice president of operations for DECA Dental. She isn’t alone. Several other colleagues from the original dental office have also stuck with the company and grown with it. “We have the people that started it and have come along for the ride,” Ahmed says. “Those people are still here, and they’ve had an opportunity to grow not only financially but also intellectually.”

These days, Ahmed spends most of his time thinking strategically and traveling to new territories. The company is opening a new Ideal Dental office every nine days and it has doubled its revenue since 2020 while maintaining double digit same store sales growth. If he keeps it up, Ahmed could make his dream, of a national dental brand, a reality.

In so many ways, Ahmed hasn’t forgotten his roots. To this day, he is an active member of a WhatsApp group text of his graduating class at St. George’s, aptly named “96 OG Tuck Shop,” with 80 schoolmates who live around the world. Although he wants to build a dental empire, people have always been first. “It gives me so much joy knowing how many lives I’ve had the chance to impact from this little concept of starting a dental office.”

ON THE ROAD

Sulman Ahmed says his mother instilled fight and persverance into his character at a young age.

2015

Ideal Dental grows to 30 locations and secures its firt PE investment, though Ahmed maintains control of the company.

2016

Now with 50 locations, the company expands beyond North Texas and into other Texas markets under the Ideal branding.

2017

Ahmed is named EY Entrepreneur of The Year for the Southwest Region for the rapid and innovative growth of Ideal Dental.

2020

Ideal Dental expands outside of Texas for the firt time in its history. Today the company has numerous locations in seven states.

2021

The company, now with more than 100 locations across the U.S. receives the highest multiple ever in the dental segment from Blackstone.

2022

DECA Dental Group expands to more than 150 locations across the U.S. and is opening a new storefront every nine days.

For over 30 years, The Real Estate Council has invested in Dallas’ greatest asset: You.

Since its founding more than three decades ago, The Real Estate Council (TREC) has been a catalyst for accelerating the careers of Dallas’ commercial real estate trailblazers and developing the industry leaders of tomorrow.

We believe that relationships are the lifeblood of career success, civic responsibility, and community investment. We connect our members with one-of-a-kind industry experiences that empower them to create a positive, lasting impact on our city.

LEADERSHIP

1,160

Number of graduates from a leadership development program PUBLIC POLICY

60

Number of critical policy issues championed for that positively impact our industry and long-term regional economic growth COMMUNITY INVESTMENT

$16.6M

Amount invested in neighborhood revitalization efforts in the form of loans and grants

Together, with the work of our dedicated members, we continue to support our city’s economic success and positively shape our region’s future. To learn more about TREC’s impact, or to get involved, visit recouncil.com.