An Interview with Five Prominent CTOs Shaping What’s Next
Growth doesn’t happen by accident—it’s built. From the systems that power smarter operations to the tools that elevate patient and user experience, the CTOs featured in this issue are designing the frameworks that help their companies scale, adapt, and lead.
Whether inside a fast-growing DSO or at the helm of technology serving the industry, each leader brings a distinct perspective on how innovation actually happens—what to invest in, what to ignore, and how to stay focused when the noise gets loud.
Meet five visionary technology leaders who are reshaping what it means to be a CTO in the dental industry. Their responses are equal parts strategic and personal. You’ll find insight into long-term tech bets, practical approaches to productivity, and the mindset required to align complexity with clarity. And yes, even what keeps them up at night.
This is growth by design—and the executives behind it.
What’s one technology decision you’ve made in the last year that will shape your company for the next five?
Our goal is to connect patients with financing options at the moments that make the biggest impact for them—and technology is an increasingly vital piece of that equation. We’ve been deeply embedded in the dental space for more than 35 years. During that time, we’ve prioritized partnerships that allow us to reach patients where they are with payment choices that fit their budget and lifestyle.
One way we’ve been doing this through the years is by partnering with independent software vendors (ISVs). Synchrony’s extensive partnerships with many of the leading healthcare ISVs make it possible for practices to seamlessly integrate customized technology into their existing systems. These partnerships ultimately allow us to extend financing offerings that boost treatment acceptance from patients, supporting dental providers by ensuring their patients can continue seeking care.
In your view, what role should the CTO play in shaping the user experience?
Customer experience is at the heart of everything we do. I have a unique role overseeing both our technology and operations organizations, including our contact center teams. Bringing these organizations together has enabled more transparency, closer collaboration, and a sharper focus on CX across channels—ensuring a positive and consistent experience, no matter how patients engage with us.
Of course, this extends to our providers as well. We recognize that handling healthcare payments can be complicated, even on a good day. Streamlining that process starts with making our solutions as seamless and easy to use as possible.
All to say—technology plays an essential role today in shaping the user experience, and it’s only becoming increasingly critical. I think CTOs who embrace this role and develop a real passion for the customer experience will be best positioned to influence and drive growth for their organizations.
What keeps you up at night— cybersecurity, interoperability, or something else entirely?
I truly believe we have the industry’s best talent. Our teams are experts in the sectors we serve and bring incredible passion for driving innovation and results for our partners. Especially within technology, I know there’s always competition to attract and retain high-performing employees. That’s why, as a company, we have prioritized creating an outstanding employee experience and culture for our Synchrony teams.
Our approach centers on employee listening. I travel to each of our team’s Synchrony hubs to hear directly from employees. Then we act on their feedback. This has led to quick tech fixes, process overhauls, new employee benefits, career development programs, and much more. Most importantly, it creates a culture of trust, where great talent can do great work.
What’s one piece of non-tech advice that made you a better technology leader?
The best advice I’ve received is to stay curious. Sometimes it can be hard to set egos aside and admit that you aren’t the expert in every discussion, which is why real curiosity takes courage. It means surrounding yourself with smart people with different life experiences and being unafraid to ask a question that exposes that you don’t have all the answers.
Whether you’re a new leader or a veteran member of the team—ask the questions. It shows you want to learn more and grow with your team. If you’re not having those conversations, you can’t learn, you can’t improve, and your business won’t advance.
What emerging tech trend is overhyped—and which one isn’t getting enough attention?
In many ways, I believe the generative AI discussion is both oversaturated and often misunderstood. Gen AI has incredible potential and will undoubtedly change the ways many of us work but can exist as a tool that supports human-centered work, rather than threatening it.
We view AI as a partner at Synchrony, not a replacement for human expertise. Gen AI can help get certain tasks done more efficiently, but a human must always be in the loop. We’ve introduced a variety of use cases across our business over the past two years, and they have one thing in common—they reduce friction in employees’ day-to-day work. In many cases, gen AI has reduced or removed tedious manual tasks, helping employees to focus on the more fulfilling and engaging parts of their jobs.
I believe this approach has also led to enthusiastic—and responsible—exploration of gen AI-powered tools at Synchrony.
What is a recent book or podcast that you recommend?
A good friend and long-time mentor recommended The Rose Code by Kate Quinn. It’s historical fiction that takes place during World War II, telling the story of three female “code breakers”—people who were charged with decoding and breaking German military codes. The three main characters all come from various walks of life and are brought together by their wit and the intense circumstances of their duties.
We know that so many women were involved in important projects like code breaking throughout history, but often their firsthand accounts are scattered or lost because women’s stories weren’t deemed important enough to tell at the time, let alone recorded or preserved for future generations. Although this book is fiction, it reminded me of the importance of shining a light on women’s stories and valuable contributions.
What keeps you up at night—cybersecurity, interoperability, or something else entirely?
What keeps me up at night isn’t just one thing—it’s the pace of change and how we adapt while continuing to enable the business to grow securely and efficiently. Cybersecurity remains a constant concern, especially with healthcare data being a high-value target. But just as critical is interoperability. Even with intentional system design, ensuring seamless integration across clinical, operational, and financial platforms can be complex and resource-intensive.
I also think about how to evolve our technology function from a traditional support role into a true strategic partner by leveraging data, automation, and cutting-edge digital tools to improve patient care, enhance the provider experience, and drive operational efficiency. My goal is always to stay aligned with business objectives, anticipating needs and delivering scalable, sustainable solutions that help the organization thrive.
What’s one recent tech tool you personally can’t live without?
One tech tool I have personally incorporated into personal and professional life is generative AI. I use it regularly to accelerate research, draft communications, refine ideas, explore new ways to solve problems, and even create itineraries for family vacations. It has become a powerful thinking partner, helping me move faster without sacrificing depth.
Beyond personal productivity, we are actively exploring how AI can be responsibly leveraged across the organization. From automating routine documentation to enhancing data analysis and improving patient communication, the opportunities are vast. What excites me most is how AI can reduce the administrative burden for clinicians and enable more focus on patient care. We approach it thoughtfully, with a focus on transparency, safety, and alignment with our clinical and operational goals. AI is a strategic capability that has the potential to reshape how we work and serve patients.
How are you leveraging tech to improve clinician productivity without adding complexity to their workflow?
We focus on supporting clinician productivity by making technology feel almost invisible. Our approach starts with understanding where clinicians actually work—whether that is in the practice management system, the operatory, or on mobile tools. We design around those touchpoints to meet them where they are, rather than forcing them into new systems or steps.
One major area of focus is connecting across platforms to reduce redundant data entry. When systems can talk to each other, clinicians spend less time inputting the same information and more time focused on patient care. We also prioritize automation and real-time data access to support faster, more informed decision-making without adding clicks or complexity. Every solution is evaluated not just for functionality but for how seamlessly it fits into the daily workflow. Our goal is to remove friction, not add it—and that starts by listening closely to our users.
What’s been the biggest challenge in unifying data across multiple practices or platforms—and how are you addressing it?
The biggest challenge in unifying data across multiple practices is inconsistency. That can show up in processes, system usage, data capture, labeling, and interpretation at the local level.
Since we have grown through de novo, we have had the advantage of choosing our platforms from the start. However, even with that consistency, variations in workflows and user behavior can still lead to fragmented or incomplete data. To address this, we have made data governance a top priority. This includes establishing clear data standards, ownership, and validation processes to ensure accuracy and usability across the organization.
We are also investing in centralized integrations and APIs that allow for secure, real-time data flow between systems. More than just a technical task, unifying the data requires ongoing collaboration across marketing, clinical, operational, and technology teams to ensure that data supports both frontline needs and strategic decision-making.
What is a recent book or podcast that you recommend?
Two recent reads that I have enjoyed immensely and am working to incorporate into my leadership approach are Multipliers by Liz Wiseman and To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink.
Multipliers reframed how I think about leadership. It emphasizes that the most effective leaders are not those with all the answers but those who create space for others to think, contribute, and grow. That insight has shaped how I build teams, run meetings, and approach problem-solving—always looking for ways to amplify the intelligence around me rather than directing from the top down.
Daniel Pink’s To Sell Is Human complements that idea by exploring how influence and persuasion show up in everyday leadership. Whether I am advocating for a technology investment or aligning stakeholders around a shared vision, the ability to move people with clarity and purpose is critical. Together, these books reinforce the human side of leadership—developing talent, building trust, and inspiring action.
What’s one technology decision you’ve made in the last year that will shape your company for the next five?
There have been significant advancements in AI for dentistry, and over the next five years, AI will transform the dental office and patient experience. The decision to focus on finding the right AI solution to support our clinical quality and patient experience programs will transform how we view clinical quality from reactive to proactive. AI-powered tools will enable us to personalize care and build better relationships with patients.
Being thoughtful in the approach to AI is critical to building confidence in the tools and creating a roadmap to a long-term solution that clinicians and patients can trust. By understanding the role of AI in enhancing human ability and making sure we use automation for efficiency, we can place focus on making human interactions more caring and empathetic.
In your view, what role should the CTO play in shaping patient experience?
In building a roadmap that elevates the patient experience, technology leaders are critical thought partners. Collaboration creates a shared vision for a comprehensive end-to-end patient journey that can be supported by automation and integration. The technology leader plays a pivotal role in aligning technology throughout the organization and must understand how technology can improve the patient experience and seamlessly integrate with other technologies and workflows.
A technology leader who understands processes and pain points in workflows and experiences will be better equipped to create technology that works for the patient and the practice. When technology is built and supported from an automation standpoint, the human element can be lost; the partnership between operations, clinical, and technology creates an open dialogue to build a patient experience that allows people, all along the journey, to be caring humans augmented by great technology.
What does your ideal “deep work” day look like, and how often does it happen?
My best deep workday includes a thinking walk. Walking allows me to clear my mind and focus. I shut off distractions and let my mind wander and explore ideas or creative solutions that I may not see when I am in hectic workday mode. The rhythm of walking can help calm my busy brain and bring clarity of thought. Stepping away into a new environment helps me see things from a different perspective.
I am at my best and most creative self when I have a thinking walk daily, which only happens when I make it a priority and put it on my schedule. My focus is on taking a walk to think, not counting steps. I count my thinking walks as a vital leadership skill to continuously keep me balanced.
What’s been the biggest challenge in unifying data across multiple practices or platforms—and how are you addressing it?
While we have a data warehouse that helps us bridge the gap between disparate systems, changes made within those systems can be a challenge. Governance and change control are critical to ensure data is mapped and maintained for consistency across systems.
Limiting security access to make system changes helps support the change control process, but system owners need to attend governance and change control meetings, where the impacts of decisions are discussed, understood, and then communicated. Master data management used consistently across systems and departments is a good foundation and an important part of the governance and change control process.
What is a recent book or podcast that you recommend?
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick is a good book for anyone who wants a basic, not-so-technical understanding of AI. The book offers some sensible advice on interacting with AI. The title says this so well: AI isn’t human, but collaboratively working together. AI can make us better humans. It reminds you to be the human in the loop and keep human control over AI applications.
The book stresses the importance of not losing our critical thinking and problem-solving skills but learning to partner with AI to enhance human potential. The most critical human in the AI loop is the person who reviews, judges, and analyzes the data AI provides. We are all curious, excited, and a bit wary of AI, so it was nice to find a book that offers some advice on being more prepared for the massive changes ahead in a rapidly changing field.
What do you prioritize or make time for that replenishes you?
I love the water—just being near water replenishes my joy well. Knowing my paddleboard is in my car, waiting to hit the water after a long day, keeps a smile on my face. I started cold-water swimming and have learned to love that moment when you have to make the decision to just jump in—and once you get past the initial shock, you are refreshed and exhilarated. When facing a difficult decision or task, I think of that moment when I jump in, and I’m reminded to stop overthinking and take the leap.
In your view, what role should the CTO play in shaping patient experience?
There is a reason some organizations choose to have a C-level IT leader, and that choice comes down to an awareness that technology is at the center of how every business is evolving. In terms of patient experience, we’ve seen a huge transformation over the past few years, whether it be the shiny new AI radiography solutions, patient engagement tools like MaxAssist, digital scanning technology, or AI agents answering phone calls.
The role of the CTO is to be a partner to help vet these solutions out, understand who the pretenders are and only implement the real deal, and use the experience technologists have around systems implementations. This ensures we get the change management right for the clinic so that they’re ready to adopt these solutions properly and provide a frictionless experience to the patient.
What keeps you up at night—cybersecurity, interoperability, or something else entirely?
Anybody who has cybersecurity as a mandate will always be kept up by it, no matter how well prepared. While we’ve done a lot of great work to strengthen the resilience of our network and our clinics, risk is always present. Dentistry is a highly attacked industry and we’re seeing further tailoring of attacks towards our dental clinics like phishing emails masked as patient referrals, and therefore preparing our administrative teams on phishing and usage of MFA have been critical. These are fairly new measures in our industry, but they’re foundational and critical to adopt. I encourage anyone outside of our network to also make these important investments in training and cybersecurity as this is an area where we’re better off as an entire industry when everyone is secure to ensure dentistry isn’t perceived as a soft target.
What’s one piece of non-tech advice that made you a better technology leader?
Leading with empathy and being and having a servant-based leadership philosophy. This generally surprises a lot of people, as the stereotype of a tech executive is that we’re very input and output focused and don’t focus on the human side. Given that technology wears multiple hats (not only implementing new technology but supporting current technology), managing risk and security can lead to teams being overwhelmed and burnt out. Unless you’re equipped to support your team as people, you’re not going to be successful in creating an environment where you can balance all these demands and keep your head above water and your teams engaged.
What’s one technology decision you’ve made in the last year that will shape your company for the next five?
The biggest technology decision in the past year was landing on VideaHealth as our partner for AI radiography. Given this technology has been around dentistry for the past few years, the first part of this critical decision is knowing when the right time was to fully commit. We were intentional in having early pilots across all the major vendors and watching the technology closely, and we felt this was the right time. These solutions have evolved to a place where while they’re not accurate enough to replace a clinician’s judgment, they’re additive to the clinical and patient experience where prior iterations were far too “noisy” with false positives to be effective.
The second part of this critical decision was picking the right partner, balancing clinical feedback with the ability to execute a rollout at scale, along with commercial considerations. We also wanted to bet on a partner we felt would be around for the long haul. As we’re now well into our rollout of VideaHealth’s clinical AI solution, I can see how this will shape our patient experience and standard of care for years to come, and our dentists and teams really like the solution.
How are you leveraging tech to improve clinician productivity without adding complexity to their workflow?
It’s more about the workflow and how a clinic adopts technology rather than the technology itself. If we take VideaHealth’s clinical AI solution for radiography as an example, one of our best doctors who uses it freely admits that when he first implemented the technology, it slowed him down.
What changed after a few weeks was he thought about the workflow—as an example, ensuring his staff already has the application open in the operatory when he comes in. He also changed over time viewing the annotated view before the unannotated view so that he still used his own clinical judgment for the final say but understood where the AI was drawing his attention first to evaluate those findings before doing a final check of everything else in the field of view.
Very few technologies will improve clinician or staff productivity on their own. It’s about how these technologies are implemented and adopted that will ultimately lead to the right outcomes.
How do you prioritize tech investments across clinical, operational, and patient-facing initiatives?
I’m very thankful that given the size of Dentalcorp, if it’s the right investment to make, and if it will drive the right outcome, the capital will be there. This is an advantage we have that may not be true of many smaller DSOs or independent operators.
The other side of that coin is when you do want to invest and implement something, you have more than 570+ clinics to roll out, which requires significant planning and effort. We’re very intentional with our prioritization; we don’t chase shiny objects or the latest features. We look at what is foundational (like PMS consolidation, cybersecurity, and data) and how we can execute on those foundational things across a large network to then act as a springboard for flashier investments that we’ll be able to implement more broadly because the foundation is there to integrate with.
These foundational pieces are sometimes multiyear strategies that require very intentional planning and investment but are absolutely necessary for the long-term success and scalability of our network.
What is a recent book or podcast that you recommend?
I am going to shamelessly plug for our very own Dentalcorp podcast DNTL Talk hosted by our Chief Dental Officer Dr. Gary Glassman. We have two episodes on AI in dentistry I highly recommend, and there is a lot of other great content there too.
What’s one technology decision you’ve made in the last year that will shape your company for the next five?
Over the last two years we have built and deployed API infrastructure that enables DSOs and Practice Management Software to create intelligent workflows within their applications. This shifts old-school clearinghouse models that were slow and had no real-time feedback within the workflow for the user. We now leverage this stack to provide intelligence for patient eligibility and payment reconciliation in detail that was never available to dental practices.
How do you balance the need to push forward while aligning legacy systems and workflows?
With over 20 years of experience, DentalXChange has cultivated its knowledge of Practice Management Software and transaction data to develop solutions that help bridge gaps in legacy workflows. This knowledge helped us understand the variances that exist within these systems, enabling us to build an API infrastructure that normalizes these variances. We are now actively working with every Practice Management Software in dental to utilize our API stack to upgrade these workflows.
What keeps you up at night— cybersecurity, interoperability, or something else entirely?
While cybersecurity is number one, the next most important problem is automating treatment planning to payer payment life cycle within the dental office. We have created purpose-built solutions, like Eligibility AI, to provide data that helps dental offices get accurate pricing for patients at the time of service, creating a more efficient RCM life cycle from claims to payments. We are now working on a similar solution to reconcile payments from insurance companies through automation. I am always thinking about ways to innovate and modernize these actions into the user workflow within the Practice Management Software so the front office can focus on patient care.
In your view, what role should the CTO play in shaping user experience?
While UX is typically seen as the domain of design and product, the reality is that technology defines the boundaries of what is possible. I see it as my responsibility to ensure our tech strategy enables exceptional user experiences. That means collaborating closely with design and product early in the process, making intentional trade-offs and advocating for things like real-time responsiveness. It’s not about dictating UI decisions, but about creating the conditions where great UX can thrive—through scalable platforms, clean APIs, fast feedback loops, and a culture that values user empathy.
What’s one piece of non-tech advice that made you a better technology leader?
When approaching a solution to a problem, we always go in with the “How can I solve this problem?” mindset. Early in my career, I was quick to jump in with solutions, especially in technical conversations. “Listen to the room with the approach that every person in the room is smarter than you” and “Listen to what’s not being said”. These two pieces of advice have reshaped the way I work and lead my team.
What does your ideal “deep work” day look like and how often does it happen?
An ideal deep workday starts early, before the noise kicks in. I like to start two to three hours before my first meeting for the day for uninterrupted work. That time is for strategic thinking, architecture design, digging deep into a complex problem that needs clarity. Realistically, deep workdays happen once, maybe twice a week—and only if I guard the time fiercely. It’s not about volume, it’s about protecting quality thinking time, because that’s where the best decisions are made.
What’s one recent tech tool you personally can’t live without?
My reMarkable tablet has become nonnegotiable for me. It’s where I think. I use it for deep notes during meetings, sketching out architectural designs, and clearing my head when I need to step back from the screen. What I love most is that it’s distraction-free, with no notifications, no browser tabs, just focused thoughts.
What is a recent book, or podcast that you recommend? And Why?
On the podcast front, I’d suggest Acquired. They do deep dives into iconic companies and technologies that are rich with business insight and strategic thinking.
