My cousins and I tumbled, laughing, into the car. I climbed into the middle front seat with no seatbelt.
The last thing I remember was my face smashing into the dashboard. Broken nose, jaw, teeth, maxilla.
It was the most devastating moment of my life.
The road to revolutionizing oral care didn’t start in a lab, it started with a broken smile.
Beyond Aesthetics
The culture I grew up in was traditional Georgian, very rooted in family values. Getting married young was expected. People would formally ask for your hand in marriage. Beauty was everything—how you looked often mattered more than anything else. But I was different. I had a mind I wanted to use, dreams I wanted to pursue. My father knew that. Nevertheless, at 13, I was being prepped for introductions and weddings.
My parents, new immigrants, didn’t know the best doctors or have access to top care so we went to the local clinics. I went through years of dental work with implants, root canals, veneers, and braces. I hated looking in the mirror. I felt insecure and carried this invisible pain.
But one day, the orthodontist said something I never forgot. He said, “Don’t worry, great things will come from you. You’ll change people’s lives.”
He gave me hope. He made me stop focusing on what I looked like and start thinking about what I could do. That one moment changed everything. I cared about making a difference. And from then on, my life took a different path.
No Complaints, No Excuses, Just Work
In addition to the complete change in my life’s trajectory, my parents’ compassion, respect, and tenacity influenced my decision to become a doctor.
My father drove a taxi for 14 years, an old yellow Checker. Eventually, he built his own company, bought medallions, and ran a fleet of cabs. He’d be up at 3 a.m., fixing cars when they broke down. There was no complaining, just work, determination, and problem-solving. He did whatever had to be done and so did my mom. It’s almost like you forget the past, you forget the future, and you just keep doing the next step. That’s the resilience that I’ve learned.
My mother had followed the customary Georgian path of getting married young—in fact, she left school one semester shy of becoming a physician to marry my father.
She sacrificed so much of herself. She was brilliant. She’d help me with chemistry and organic chemistry. It pained me as a girl to watch her life revolve around domestic duties when I knew she was meant for so much more. I chose a different path.
Trading Prestige for Purpose
I started dental school at the University of Pennsylvania. After a residency at New York Presbyterian, I spent two years practicing cosmetic dentistry on Fifth Avenue in New York City. While doing that, I was offered a teaching position at NYU in their Advanced Aesthetic Dentistry program, which I held for two years. But eventually, I returned to Penn for orthodontic school.
I graduated at the top of my class and practiced orthodontics in NYC for 10 years. That time was incredible. I met amazing patients, colleagues, and mentors. But over time, I knew I wanted to go beyond the practice and build something that would impact lives on a larger scale.
“I wasn’t chasing approval, I was chasing impact.”
Emergency Calls Spark Innovation
Throughout my career as an orthodontist, I always took the emergency calls. My husband, also an orthodontist, and my father-in-law would hand them to me because I had the patience to walk my patients through what to do. Over the years, I felt the pain and frustration on the other end of those calls: parents trying to help their kids with swollen gums, broken appliances, sleepless nights. I kept thinking there had to be a better way. They shouldn’t have to resort to toenail clippers or pliers to make urgent fixes. Kids shouldn’t have to suffer through school or another night in pain.
I carried that frustration with me for years. Then COVID hit. Suddenly, families from all over were showing up at our home because they had nowhere else to turn. We saw so many people, each with urgent problems. That was the breaking point.
One night, I was in the basement, my husband next to me, the kids playing nearby. I began sketching ideas and drawing designs for what became Tweakz®. I couldn’t stop. My husband was chiming in: “Add a diamond file. A diamond tip.” I kept going, researching clinical trials, studying what worked and what didn’t.
It felt like solving a giant puzzle, and I thought, “I can do this.”
Within weeks, I created 18 products, organized into three collections: Oral Relief, Microbiome, and Aesthetic.
30 Patents and Zero Tolerance for Band-Aid Fixes
At the core of it all was the same why: the voices on the other end of those calls, the desperate parent, the crying child, the family in chaos. As orthodontists, we hand out goody bags filled with toothbrushes and floss that patients just throw away—because when they’re in pain, they’re not thinking about brushing or flossing.
The real question is: How do we get them out of pain so they can achieve proper oral health? When you solve the actual problem, everything else falls into place. If you don’t, you’re just putting a band-aid on it.
I wanted to solve the problem and that led me to create a portfolio of sciencedriven, research-backed products designed to help patients when they’re at their most vulnerable.
I returned to Penn to deepen my research in preventive medicine, focusing on oral wellness, the oral microbiome, and new delivery systems. I now have about 30 patents pending.
Toenail Clippers Don’t Belong in Orthodontics
People are still using toenail clippers to fix broken wires. It’s awful, and dangerous. Pieces can fly off, lodge into the buccal mucosa or esophagus. It’s a huge liability for the doctor, but no one talks about it. And when people speak up, there’s pushback: “Oh, it’s fine, just come in, miss work, miss school, don’t sleep for two nights while a wire digs into your cheek, causing inflammation, bacteria buildup, plaque, and demineralizations.” All of it is preventable.
That’s why Tweakz for Braces was the first product. It includes a flush distal end cutter that safely trims wires without leaving sharp edges or loose pieces, unlike old nail clippers. The dislodged bracket remover clears broken brackets, while the rubber band applicator makes changing elastics easy. The diamond dental file smooths rough spots on brackets, hooks, and bands.
The Tweakz for Aligners kit offers an elastics applicator, an aligner remover that removes the most retentive of aligners with ease, and the diamond dental file.
Clinician First, Businesswoman by Fire
Starting the business came with a kind of fearless ignorance. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and in a way, that protected me. I simply focused on the next step: Ask questions, find answers, and keep moving. The stress didn’t hit until my expectations collided with the real mechanics of business— timelines, margins, negotiations. I didn’t yet understand how deals were made or what tradeoffs were required to keep things moving.
The hardest part wasn’t the work itself; it was staying grounded in a world where I no longer felt like the expert. In medicine and oral health, I was confident. In business, I was uncomfortable. Constantly. But instead of pulling back, I focused on what I knew: how to help people, how to remove pain, and how to prevent suffering. My fascination with removing discomfort from someone’s life is what still drives me today.
There were plenty of times I was told “no.”
But I learned something important:
When you hear “no,” you’re probably just talking to the wrong person.
So I kept going.
Because I wasn’t chasing approval, I was chasing impact.
There were moments of real doubt, days when I questioned everything and nights when I leaned hard on even the smallest wins to keep going. But those glimmers of clarity and hope kept me moving forward. I’ve never looked back. The vision I hold now is bigger, clearer, and more powerful than ever, and it’s rooted in helping others feel empowered too.
Being an orthodontist always felt natural to me, but becoming an entrepreneur felt like learning a whole new language. Every day is unpredictable. But little by little, the products have started to speak for themselves. That’s been my greatest challenge, bridging the gap between my skill set as a clinician and the skill set you need as an entrepreneur. It’s so important to me that someone opens that package with a smile, knowing this product is going to help them.
90% of Emergencies Solved Before They Start
Beyond improving patient care, these products protect the bottom line by preventing emergencies that can cost orthodontists up to $300 at each emergency visit. Ninety-nine percent of bracket emergencies are due to broken brackets or sharp distal ends. For aligners, 92% involve rough edges or trays that are challenging to remove.
Those unexpected visits, usually right after school, at the busiest time of day, can throw an entire office into chaos, from sterilizing tools and turning over chairs to derailing the schedule.
OrthoNu® products help protect profits by solving 90% of emergencies right at home. The Tweakz tool cuts and holds the wire safely, so patients don’t have to rush in. The Oral Relief collection includes Mouth-aid™ to soothe sores, Comfort Tape™ to help with sensitivity, Chillin’ Strips™ to soothe wounds, and the OrthoChewz™ to ease dry mouth and oral fixation. Today, Tweakz is used in 500+ practices and shipped to 5,000+ patients nationwide, in addition to over 8,000 Oral Relief collections. We’re just getting started.
For big practices and DSOs, these tools don’t just save time, they save thousands of dollars. And they open up new revenue streams by offering parents a kit they want to buy. It’s a win-win-win: Practices save money, create new revenue, and less-stressful experiences for patients.
Precision Tools for the Pain No One Plans For
While I originally created these products for orthodontic patients, the oral relief kits are just as effective for anyone recovering from all dental procedures. Whether it’s after a scaling, root canal, crown, periodontal surgery, or multiple extractions, patients never had anything meaningful to take home to ease pain and discomfort. Now they do. Smart strip technology allows the product to stay in place for hours, deliver active ingredients, and support real healing.
Our current Chillin’ Strip molds anywhere in the mouth and stays in place. The more saliva you have, the better it adheres, the opposite of wax. Soon we’ll have strips that last 8, 24, even 72 hours. That means safer wounds, fewer infections, and better outcomes for surgeries, extractions, biopsies, and even for cancer or radiation patients dealing with oral sores.
In the end, it was never just about orthodontics, it was about listening to the pain, the panic, and the unmet needs on the other end of those calls. I realized those moments weren’t interruptions. They were insights.
They pushed me to ask myself: Am I truly solving the problem, or just applying another short-term fix? That question became my compass. I stopped accepting temporary fixes and started building solutions that treat the root causes—solutions that bring real relief, restore confidence, and shift the standard of care.
Because in a field built on precision, we can no longer afford to think small. Our patients deserve more.
I created OrthoNu to solve the problems I lived. First as a teenager in pain with nowhere to turn, then as a doctor who kept running into the same missing pieces in care. Too many gaps. Too little access. Not enough empathy.
If you believe care can be better, make it better. Because when your mission is rooted in truth, and your drive is unstoppable, you don’t wait for permission—you lead.
The Next Frontier in Diagnostics
The future of healthcare lies in smart strip technology—advancements that extend beyond conventional treatments to support early detection, prevention, and accessible care on a global scale.
Over the next 18 to 24 months, OrthoNu will release a series of innovations—each one grounded in science, built with precision, and driven by one goal: to empower patients and providers.
From targeted pain relief to early disease detection, our IP-protected smart oral strips are changing what’s possible in oral health—making care more effective, more accessible, and more human.
But this isn’t just about product launches or patents.
It’s about leading with purpose.
Often, these lesions are nearly invisible—a faint white line, like lichen planus—that even dentists might miss. Patients are being diagnosed years too late, and doctors face lawsuits because these signs go undetected.
I’m excited about what the products could do for underserved populations. We could triage patients early, in a way that’s affordable and accessible worldwide. We could catch diseases early. Consider a seven-year-old boy who has no idea he has cancer in his mouth. Without this technology, it might not be found until it becomes a much bigger problem years later. The dream is to save lives through early detection.
This vision pushes oral care far beyond the dental chair—toward a future defined by value-based care, personalized wellness, and minimally invasive diagnostics.
The goal is to empower clinicians to be the frontline heroes for their patients. By creating data collection tools for every patient, we can track changes in their oral health over time and catch problems before they escalate.
This technology could revolutionize disease prevention. Think about populations with limited access to healthcare—being able to give them oral smart technology that detects early signs of oral disease, diabetes, heart disease, or cancer. It’s an affordable, accessible way to triage health worldwide.
Because when you build from a place of compassion, you don’t stop after one success. You keep going—because you have to. And when innovation starts from the heart, it becomes unstoppable.
