Dental Leaders Podcast

Recorded live at Bupa Dental Health Is Live, this Dental Leaders episode sees Payman joined by Andrew Bower from Philips Oral Healthcare for a sharp look at dentistry in 2040. The conversation moves from AI, robotics and connected toothbrushes to the bigger question of how oral health can become part of everyday whole-body care. Andrew explores Philips’ long-term view on prevention, consumer behav...

Ian Dunn didn't set out to become a periodontist. A chance encounter with a stranger in a hospital corridor, a course he took on a whim, and the absence of anyone else doing the job in Liverpool — that's how a specialism was born. In this episode, Payman sits down with Ian to trace a career shaped as much by happy accidents as by hard graft; from a comprehensive school kid who retook his A...

From pizza shop to Maxfax theatre — Sina Gilannejad's route into dentistry is anything but straightforward. Born in Northern Ireland to Iranian parents, Sina brings a rare blend of warmth, self-awareness, and hard-won clinical confidence to this conversation.  He opens up about the anxiety that drove him towards DCT, the perfectionism that almost derailed him, and how a stint in maxillofacial...

Meghan Chard is many things at once — principal dentist, practice owner, mum of three, and quietly passionate evangelist for childhood airway health.  In this episode, she sits down with Payman for a wide-ranging conversation that takes in meeting her husband Simon at dental school, buying his family's Leicestershire practice a month before their first child arrived, and the very particular ch...

What happens when a mechanical engineer spends a decade fixing factories, then walks away from it all to start dental school at 34? Henry Totterdell joins Payman to tell that story.  He talks about the years spent solving problems on aircraft carriers and chemotherapy production lines, the slow-burning itch to do something with his hands, and why he finally took the plunge.  Along the way they get...

Ali Al-Hassan is the walking embodiment of work hard, play hard — a young dentist who's gone from associate to super associate, practice co-owner and globe-trotter, all while building a following that brings patients straight to his chair.  In this episode, he and Payman get into what really separates an ordinary associate from a "super" one: bringing in your own patients, owning your fees, and tr...

Ashley King and Sophie Lovett run the international side of Pearl, the AI company that reads dental radiographs — and they turn up as a self-confessed package deal.  The chat starts with what the tech actually does (a second opinion for clinicians, and a way to help patients finally see what's going on in their own mouths), but it doesn't stay there for long. Payman, Ashley and Sophie get...

Professor Tara Renton OBE brings four generations of dental history — and a career built on curiosity rather than ambition — to her conversation with Payman.  From navigating undiagnosed dyslexia and a father who begged her not to follow him into dentistry, to becoming the first female chair of oral surgery at King's College London, her story is one of serendipity, resilience, and an almost ob...

Mike Gray's path to dentistry was anything but straightforward — and that's precisely what makes this conversation so compelling.  A former semi-professional mountain biker who raced the World Series across three disciplines, a musician who once had the head of Universal Publishing sitting in his living room in rural Wales, and a dentist who spent years doing everything he could to avoid d...

Rawa Jawad Quinn is a dentist-turned-tech founder whose restless energy and refusal to be underestimated have shaped every chapter of her career. In this episode, she tells Payman about growing up in Chelsea after her Iraqi family fled Kuwait with nothing, studying in Liverpool, and working across 16 dental practices before channelling her frustrations into Medicube — a consent and patient communi...

Andy Acton returns to the Dental Leaders hot seat for a proper deep-cut conversation about the business of owning a dental practice — from first purchase right through to the exit.  Payman and Andy cover the current market (spoiler: banks still love dentists, and buyers far outnumber sellers), before getting into the real meat of the episode: owner fatigue. Andy breaks down the five categories of...

In this lively and layered episode of Mind Movers, Vanita Rattan joins Rhona and Payman to talk about medicine, entrepreneurship, motherhood and the sheer force of personality it takes to build something different. She traces her path from UCL medical school to formulating skincare for skin of colour, then opening clinics around the world before Covid forced a brutal pivot into social media and di...

At just 27, Ali Hashemizadeh is doing things most dentists twice his age haven't managed — two private associate roles, a growing reputation as an endodontist, and the kind of self-awareness that usually takes a decade to develop.  In this episode, Payman sits down with the Newcastle-based, Aberdeen-raised, Iranian dentist to trace the path from a rocky first year on the NHS to finding his fee...

Grant Goodstein isn't a dentist — and that might be exactly why this episode is so refreshing. An American tech exec turned practice owner, Grant moved to London for love (a Hannah Montana-inspired trip to LA, a dating app, and a last-minute Vegas concert, if you can believe it) and ended up buying a mixed NHS practice in Fulham with his wife, Leah.  What follows is a masterclass in what happe...

Mehy Lo Presti joins Payman on the podcast for a wide-ranging conversation that's equal parts origin story and quiet manifesto. Raised in the heartland of La Mancha by a Palestinian father and Italian mother, Mehy arrived in London in 2015 with barely any English, no NHS number, and — as it turns out — very little interest in following the conventional path.  He's since built a reputation...

Prav is back in the host's chair for a conversation that's quite literally close to home — Andy Sloan is his boss. Andy is the MD of Agilio, the dental software and compliance platform, and a man who has overseen well over a hundred practice acquisitions throughout his career.  But before any of that, he was a council house kid from the Wirral, running paper rounds at 14, pulling pints at...

This week, Payman sits down with Zain Remy, a Newcastle-based practice owner whose path to dentistry was anything but straightforward. After missing out on dental school the first time round, Zain took the pharmacology route, grafted his way through eight years of study, and eventually qualified from King's College London in 2016.  What followed was a decade of pivotal decisions — a golden han...

This week, Payman chats with JW Oliver — serial entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, and the man behind Support DDS, the largest dental insourcing company in the US.  JW's story begins well below the poverty line in Texas and winds through dental equipment, bankruptcy, and a fateful meeting at a Christian marriage conference that led him to Zimbabwe — and ultimately to building a 1,700-strong...

What happens when a Royal Marine Commando dentist who spent six months being ambushed on every patrol in Helmand Province turns his hand to building dental businesses?  You get Mike Hesketh: serial practice owner, consultant, and one of the more quietly formidable figures in UK dentistry. In this episode, Payman sits down with Mike to trace a story that runs from a North Wales council estate and t...

Mind Movers is back — and what a return. Rhona is fresh from maternity leave (and a rather eventful ICU stay) and she's brought a guest who needs little introduction: cosmetic dentist Neelima Patel, known to fans of Married at First Sight UK as the woman who handled an absolute car crash of a match with extraordinary grace.  This episode covers a lot of ground. From Neelima's route into de...

Most dentists are brilliant clinicians and hopeless with numbers — and Bilal Ahmed has built a career filling exactly that gap.  A chartered accountant and tax adviser who stumbled into the dental world through his wife's professional circle, Bilal brings a corporate finance sharpness to a profession that's long been underserved by the accounting industry.  In this episode, Payman and Bila...

Nasser Syed is a man who doesn't really do stillness. With a background in oral surgery and conscious sedation, he's pivoted from five clinical days a week to running a growing group of practices, training dentists, and launching a brand new facility hire venture aimed at super associates who'd rather focus on their dentistry than deal with the headaches of practice ownership.  Joining...

What happens when you turn the microphone on the man who's spent years behind it? In this episode of the NAIL-IT podcast, Rana and Bav get Payman Langroudi — host of Dental Leaders and Clinical Director at Enlighten — firmly in the hot seat.  It's a wide-ranging, refreshingly candid conversation that moves from the origins of Enlighten and the relentless pursuit of world-class quality to t...

Payman chats with Daniel Jones, the Cambridge-educated entrepreneur who's bringing analytical rigour to dental practice management.  Daniel shares the dramatic health journey that redirected his path from investment banking into healthcare innovation, revealing how a near-miss diagnosis of a life-threatening heart condition shaped his mission.  The conversation explores the technical challenges of...

Payman chats with Amber Aplin, who's carved out something genuinely different in the Scottish Borders. From military dentist to biomimetic practice owner, Amber's journey takes in Germany, Iraq, private equity, and ultimately building a practice that puts prevention and patient education at its core.  She talks candidly about the realities of military life, the loneliness of early practice ownersh...