Dental Leaders Podcast

Esther Shirin returns to Dental Leaders under a new name, having first appeared as Sharon Walsh in episode 278 to talk about losing her practice, her marriage and her children during a breakdown that led to alcohol addiction and homelessness. This conversation picks up from there: she's written a book about everything that happened since, and Payman says plainly that reading it changed how he thinks about his own life.

Esther talks about the voice she heard, lying on a sofa in 2022 having been given little chance of seeing Christmas, asking her whether she wanted to live or die, and the years of addiction, a GDC suspension and eventual recovery that followed her choice. She's open about where that recovery actually came from: an elderly man she met on a park bench who'd known the Kray twins, a sister who took her in when she had nowhere else to go, and a faith practice built from pieces of Sufism, the Lord's Prayer and Alcoholics Anonymous rather than any one tradition.

There's also a frank account of her seven-year case with the GDC, including a misdiagnosis by an expert witness she successfully challenged, and her view on why the current system leaves clinicians feeling judged by people who've never done the job. Later in the conversation, Esther discloses that she was abused as a child, and talks about only uncovering that history in therapy decades later, once addiction had stripped away the ways she'd learned to cope with it.

In This Episode

00:00:40 – Introduction

00:02:50 – The name change

00:05:25 – Choosing life

00:15:00 – Who she is now

00:19:35 – Money and gratitude

00:25:15 – People who saved her life

00:35:35 – Learning to respond, not react

00:39:35 – The GDC process

00:49:10 – Returning to dentistry

00:53:50 – Yoga and recovery

01:02:40 – A three-week gut detox

01:10:50 – Fluoride and alternative oral care

01:17:05 – Public speaking and teaching

01:21:10 – Childhood abuse and therapy

01:26:40 – The book and what's next

About Esther Shirin

Esther Shirin is a dentist who first appeared on Dental Leaders as Sharon Walsh in episode 278, discussing the breakdown that led to addiction, homelessness and the loss of her practice. She has since written a memoir, The Naked Soul of a Dentist, and is now rebuilding her career after a GDC suspension, alongside work as a qualified yoga teacher and public speaker on mental health and addiction.

Rana Al-Falaki opens by telling Payman what she's still struggling with, even now: the gap between how put-together she looks from the outside and how much she still has to fight to let people see the rest of it. She joins him as a specialist periodontist and laser research pioneer who built two award-winning practices, sold them, and then rebuilt her entire career as a performance coach after her body forced the issue.

The backstory is a lot. Her mother died of breast cancer when Rana was 24, a death she now ties directly to a lifetime of people-pleasing and swallowed stress. In her mid-twenties she moved in with a man who became physically and emotionally abusive, a relationship she couldn't find the strength to leave for years. By her late thirties, buried under a GDC complaint, a divorce and the demands of running two practices, her body gave out: a diagnosis of POTS, a condition that had already left other sufferers unable to walk, arrived at almost the same time as a quiet choice about which label she was going to wear.

There's real clinical substance threaded through all of it too. Rana explains how she talked her way into becoming one of the first periodontists in the UK using erbium lasers for bone regeneration, entirely on instinct and with no studies to back her up, and how she eventually got the research published against a field she describes as deeply resistant to new ideas. She's just as direct about what it actually takes to build a referral practice patients and dentists both trust, and why building Breathe, a free wellbeing platform for the dental profession, became personal after a friend who introduced her to lasers died from an infection that followed a drinking spiral after his own GDC complaint.

In This Episode

00:00:50 – Introduction

00:02:40 – What she still struggles with

00:05:00 – Spirituality and belief

00:15:00 – Why she became a dentist

00:21:30 – Losing her mother

00:34:30 – Grief, addiction and abuse

00:43:00 – Pitfalls of high performers

00:50:40 – Burnout and chronic illness

00:57:30 – Getting into lasers

01:12:20 – Building a referral practice

01:17:40 – Marriage and divorce

01:24:45 – The Nail It coaching system

01:32:40 – Launching Breathe

01:35:55 – Blackbox thinking

01:41:25 – Favourite lectures

01:46:15 – Fantasy dinner party

About Rana Al-Falaki

Rana Al-Falaki is a specialist periodontist and laser research pioneer who built and later sold two award-winning periodontal practices in London. She is now a leadership and performance coach, the creator of the Nail It coaching system, and co-founder of Breathe, a free wellbeing platform for the dental profession.

Raid Ali arrived in Cardiff in 1998 because a friend told him it was cheaper than London, and never really left. He joins Payman as a specialist implantologist and founder of Restore Dental Group, a five-practice business built from the three practices he and two business partners bought from their old boss, having qualified in Baghdad in 1996 and sat his exams in the UK with no family connection to dentistry at all.

He talks openly about ranking fourteenth in the whole of Iraq in his final school exams during wartime, about teaching himself English from scratch after arriving (he remembers struggling just to buy bread), and about the early advice from Chris Barrow that changed how he ran his business: stick to dentistry, delegate everything else. There's a genuinely candid account of his own clinical mistakes too, including an implant placed without enough restorative space, and six stressful months defending a legal claim over a mentee's work he wasn't even liable for.

Raid also gets into the detail that's shaped his implant career: why he still refers every zygomatic case elsewhere despite being trained to do them, the French physiologist whose PRF technique changed how he thinks about healing, and why he now considers soft tissue, not implant design, the single most important factor in long-term success.

In This Episode

00:00:50 – Introduction

00:01:50 – Arriving in Cardiff

00:03:50 – Growing up in Baghdad

00:13:45 – Choosing dentistry

00:19:30 – Moving to the UK

00:21:00 – Sitting the exams

00:25:35 – First impressions of UK dentistry

00:28:35 – Buying his first practice

00:35:40 – Getting into implants

00:38:55 – Mentors who changed his thinking

00:50:00 – Advice for new implantologists

01:04:00 – Growing to five practices

01:12:35 – Blackbox thinking

01:24:35 – What grinds his gears

01:38:40 – Fantasy dinner party

About Raid Ali

Raid Ali is a specialist implantologist and founder of Restore Dental Group, a five-practice business based in Cardiff. Originally from Baghdad, he qualified in Iraq before moving to the UK in 1998, and now sits on the board of the Association of Dental Implantology, teaches an 18-day implant diploma, and co-founded the Iraqi Dental Community.

Jameel Gardee joins Payman to reflect on more than three decades in dentistry, from qualifying in Glasgow to undertaking advanced restorative training at Boston University and building a private practice centred on digital dentistry.

He looks back on the people and experiences that shaped his career, why American dentistry changed his outlook, and how his approach to restorative treatment has evolved. The conversation also explores the pressures facing younger dentists, the value of mentorship and why becoming an excellent clinician takes more than technical ability.

Much of the discussion centres on the shift from analogue to digital dentistry. Jameel breaks down the workflows behind modern smile design, from facial scanning and treatment planning to guided preparations, 3D printing and restorative materials. But there's a distinction he keeps coming back to: owning the latest technology means very little if you don't know how to bring it all together.

The conversation also takes a more personal turn as Jameel reflects on difficult patients, clinical mistakes and the emotional weight of complaints. With AI and robotics changing the profession, he considers what the next generation of dentists will need to learn and why human connection may become more valuable than ever.

Expect honest reflections on clinical excellence, digital workflows, patient trust, innovation, mentorship and the changing relationship between technology and the people delivering care.

In This Episode

00:00:50 – From Glasgow to Boston

00:05:05 – American dentistry and clinical philosophy

00:09:05 – Mentorship and younger dentists

00:21:25 – Funding further education

00:24:35 – Private practice and patient trust

00:31:20 – Empowering the dental team

00:34:05 – Discovering digital dentistry

00:38:00 – Workflows over equipment

00:41:25 – The digital first visit

00:44:25 – Facially driven treatment planning

00:51:30 – Mock-ups and smile design

00:53:50 – Guided restorative dentistry

00:57:45 – 3D printing and zirconia

01:04:25 – Research versus clinical experience

01:10:00 – Technology and patient communication

01:16:10 – Robotics and the future

01:21:40 – Blackbox thinking

01:29:15 – Learning and clinical development

01:31:20 – Fantasy dinner party

01:35:45 – Life outside dentistry

About Jameel Gardee

Jameel Gardee is a Glasgow-based dentist and educator known for his work in digital dentistry, aesthetic restorations and smile design. After qualifying from the University of Glasgow in 1995, he undertook advanced restorative and aesthetic training at Boston University.

He has since built a career combining private clinical practice with digital education, helping dentists and their teams adopt modern treatment planning and restorative workflows. Through his work with Avant Garde Dentistry, he continues to champion the use of technology to make complex dentistry more predictable and accessible.

Dental Leaders goes live from Dentown for a special compilation episode bringing together seven voices from across dentistry, design, technology, entrepreneurship and beyond.

Across a series of conversations with Payman, Galip Gürel explores the move from pioneering veneer techniques to developing robotic tooth preparation, and why precision matters more than speed. Nazariy Mykhaylyuk reflects on microscope dentistry, perfectionism and continuing to practise and run businesses in Kyiv during wartime.

Millie Morrison discusses finding her place in orthodontics, the responsibility of mentorship and overcoming the feeling that she needed to stay in her original clinical lane. Pouyan Mehdizadeh looks beyond conventional clinic design to the complete patient experience, exploring how architecture, branding, scent, sound, lighting and temperature can shape the way a space feels.

Sahil Patel takes the conversation far outside the surgery with the story of climbing Everest, from the six-week commitment and extreme conditions to summit fever and the reality that reaching the top is only halfway home. Victoria Sampson shares the less glamorous reality behind building a fast-growing business, fundraising, clinical dentistry and trying not to burn out.

Finally, Dentown founder Mehy Lo Presti joins Payman at the end of the event to reflect on two years of planning, building a world-class speaker line-up and his determination to create a different kind of dental event.

Expect robotics, clinical excellence, mentorship, design, Everest, entrepreneurship, burnout and a behind-the-scenes look at the ideas shaping dentistry's next chapter.

In This Episode00:00:50 - Galip Gürel00:19:10 - Nazariy Mykhaylyuk00:21:20 - Millie Morrison00:35:10 - Pouyan Mehdizadeh00:49:35 - Sahil Patel01:01:20 - Victoria Sampson01:12:25 - Mehy Lo Presti

About the Speakers

Galip Gürel is an internationally renowned aesthetic dentist and educator whose work has helped shape modern veneer dentistry. At Dentown, he discusses his move into dental robotics and the development of technology designed to bring greater precision and automation to tooth preparation.

Nazariy Mykhaylyuk is known internationally for microscope-enhanced dentistry and advanced digital workflows. Based in Kyiv, he continues to practise, teach and run his businesses while living through the realities of war in Ukraine.

Millie Morrison is a general dentist with a major clinical and educational focus on orthodontics. Alongside treating patients, she mentors other dentists in treatment planning, biomechanics and building confidence in their own clinical decision-making.

Pouyan Mehdizadeh is an architect, creative director and experience designer whose work spans healthcare projects internationally. His approach extends beyond interiors to consider every element of how patients experience a healthcare brand and physical space.

Sahil Patel is an accomplished cosmetic dentist and mountaineer who recently summited Mount Everest. His conversation explores the preparation, risk, psychology and extraordinary logistics behind taking on the world's highest mountain.

Victoria Sampson is a dentist, researcher and entrepreneur known for her work around saliva diagnostics and the oral microbiome. She discusses building her testing business, fundraising, maintaining clinical practice and managing the intense workload that comes with pursuing several ambitions at once.

Mehy Lo Presti is the founder of Dentown. After two years of planning, he brought together leading clinicians and thinkers for an event designed to challenge the traditional dental conference format through education, experience and community.

Kathryn Bell was seventeen, six months into a school exchange trip to Kentucky, when a minor car crash jolted loose a brain tumour nobody knew was there. She joins Payman as a general dentist at Colosseum Dental in Chippenham and the group's key opinion leader for facial aesthetics, having spent over two decades qualified after a start to adult life that involved an emergency craniotomy, a coma, meningitis and hydrocephalus, largely without her parents in the room.

She talks with real clarity about survivor's guilt, about repeating a year at school rather than falling behind her friends, and about the internal motivation that got her through GCSEs with headaches nobody could explain, years before anyone found the tumour causing them. There's a second, quieter story running alongside it too: a burnout so complete she couldn't get out of bed most mornings on the NHS, and the daughter whose birth, entirely by coincidence, pulled her out of it just in time.

Kathryn also gets specific about the actual craft of facial aesthetics: polynucleotides, why subtlety beats a dramatic result every time, and the patient with suspected body dysmorphia who brought her own fifty-times magnifying mirror to a review appointment.

In This Episode

00:00:45 – Introduction

00:01:45 – The brain tumour story

00:17:40 – Survivor's guilt

00:20:25 – Choosing dentistry

00:22:45 – Losing time at school

00:28:30 – Master's in aesthetic medicine

00:31:05 – Social media and dysmorphia

00:33:00 – Introducing facial aesthetics

00:40:00 – Skin treatments vs injectables

00:45:30 – A facial aesthetics mistake

00:56:20 – Women in dentistry

01:02:50 – A career mistake

01:09:55 – Burnout on the NHS

01:14:30 – Best lecture: Callum Youngson

01:19:35 – Fantasy dinner party

About Kathryn Bell

Kathryn Bell is a general dentist at Colosseum Dental in Chippenham and the group's key opinion leader for facial aesthetics across its 80 practices. She holds an MSc in Aesthetic Medicine, researching how social media shapes aesthetic patients' self-perception, and survived a brain haemorrhage and tumour removal at the age of seventeen.

Dipali Dalia wanted to be a barrister at fourteen, became a periodontist instead, and then went back and trained as a barrister anyway, in her forties, while still practising three days a week. She joins Payman as a specialist periodontist at Emsworth Specialist Practice near Portsmouth, having qualified as a dentist, specialised in periodontics at Guy's, and then, nearly two decades into a successful referral practice, gone back to college to sit alongside twenty-somethings doing a law conversion course.

She's honest about why the second career never quite happened. A scholarship from an Inn of Court, a year of criminal law that suited her better than the dry civil procedure rules, county court advocacy work to build experience, and still no pupillage by the time her father died of dementia at the end of a long, hardworking life. That loss changed everything, and Dipali talks with real clarity about the Hindu philosophy she leaned on afterwards, focused on the action rather than the outcome, and about coming back to periodontics with a settledness she didn't have before.

Anyone considering the same leap gets something to work with too: referral relationships, the loneliness of the bar versus the immediacy of a dental chair, and Dipali's own conclusion that failure is better read as a redirect than a verdict on your worth.

In This Episode

00:00:50 – Introduction

00:01:56 – Choosing dentistry over law

00:14:53 – Maxillofacial training

00:17:57 – Deciding to specialise

00:24:52 – Becoming a periodontist

00:28:12 – Referral relationships

00:34:47 – Peri-implantitis management

00:46:31 – The itch to become a barrister

00:52:17 – Training as a barrister in her 40s

01:00:17 – Comparing dentistry and law

01:10:27 – Losing her dad

01:17:56 – Failure as redirection

01:22:20 – A happier periodontist now

01:29:23 – Fantasy dinner party

01:38:08 – Women in dentistry and law

About Dipali Dalia

Dipali Dalia is a specialist periodontist at Emsworth Specialist Practice near Portsmouth, having trained at Guy's after an early spell in maxillofacial surgery. In her forties, she trained part-time as a barrister, completing a law conversion course and the bar course while continuing to practise periodontics, before returning to dentistry full-time.

Bizhan Shokouhi didn't set out to be an oral surgeon, or even to specialise at all. He joins Payman as a specialist oral surgeon and implantologist working across private practice and Guy's Hospital, and teaching on the Bristol MSc in Implants, having spent his first year qualified convinced he'd end up a restorative dentist.

He talks openly about the one thing he tells every trainee before they touch an implant, which has nothing to do with surgery and everything to do with communication, and about a denture case that took twenty-odd visits over eighteen months before he admitted defeat and referred it on. There's a genuinely reflective stretch on ambition too: Bizhan's own answer to whether he'd want his own practice is a flat no, and his reasoning, built around contentment rather than potential, runs against almost everything you'd expect from someone this good at his job.

Along the way, there's proper technical detail on soft tissue management, bone grafting, and why the first five minutes of a surgery matter more than anything that happens with a suture. And by the end, Payman more or less names the episode for him: was it worth it?

In This Episode

00:00:50 – Introduction

00:01:35 – A typical working week

00:04:20 – Becoming excellent

00:09:28 – Work-life balance

00:14:36 – Getting into implantology

00:21:00 – Communicating with patients

00:30:39 – Digital planning and AI

00:36:52 – Robots and the future

00:54:52 – Blackbox thinking

01:02:48 – Soft tissue lessons

01:05:11 – Building an Instagram following

01:12:04 – Mentors in implantology

01:14:44 – Why no practice of his own

01:19:59 – Best lecture: Martin Kelleher

01:22:36 – Fantasy dinner party

About Bizhan Shokouhi

Bizhan Shokouhi is a specialist oral surgeon and implantologist working in private practice and at Guy's Hospital, and a tutor on the Bristol MSc in Implants. He is known for his educational Instagram content on oral surgery and soft tissue management, and previously trained in restorative dentistry and maxillofacial surgery before specialising.

Anita Pradan pulled her car onto the hard shoulder of the motorway one day, cried, took her laptop out of the boot, and typed her resignation. She joins Payman as founder of Phoenix Dental Academy, having spent years running herself into the ground managing someone else's education business before deciding to build her own.

She talks openly about the exam that took her five years longer than expected, the practice interview where a principal offered her £1,500 a month and shouted at her for turning it down, and the gap between what overseas dentists post on Instagram and what they're actually going through once they arrive in the UK. There's a properly moving thread here about her father too, a maxillofacial surgeon who treated Nepal's royal family, and what it took for Anita to build something that was hers rather than his.

Along the way, Anita gets specific about which countries produce the best-prepared dentists, why crown preps are the one part of the ORE exam that actually matters, and the impression material disaster in her very first week that she still uses to teach students today.

In This Episode

00:01:05 – Introduction

00:01:30 – What the ORE involves

00:07:05 – Therapist-led routes into the GDC

00:10:55 – Exploitation and bad contracts

00:16:55 – Social media versus reality

00:19:30 – Building Phoenix Dental Academy

00:24:35 – Leaving a toxic workplace

00:32:15 – Growing up in her father's shadow

00:38:15 – Teaching hands-on courses

00:45:00 – The gap between passing and practising

00:52:25 – Ambition without a partner

00:57:20 – A typical week

00:59:00 – Which countries produce the best dentists

01:10:45 – Blackbox thinking

01:22:50 – Fantasy dinner party

About Anita Pradan

Anita Pradan is a Nepalese, Indian-trained dentist and founder of Phoenix Dental Academy, which prepares overseas dentists for the Overseas Registration Examination. She also teaches at the College of Medicine and Dentistry in Birmingham, part of Ulster University, and works one day a week as clinical lead for overseas clinicians within a dental group.

Ben Barter has never drilled a tooth in his life, but he's spent more time in dental events than most dentists. He joins Payman as co-founder of Dental Assembly, the latest venture in a career built entirely on getting corporates and suppliers into the same room, first at Open Rooms, then Dental Forum, and now running his own show.

In between, there's a properly strange detour: a price comparison app for beauty products, built with zero knowledge of beauty or technology, launched into a global pandemic, and later pitched successfully on Dragons Den. Ben talks candidly about what actually convinces an investor to back two people with no relevant experience, and the gut feeling he ignored right before a bus full of a hundred people failed to turn up in Dubai.

There's a decent amount of shop talk here too, on why fun is a business strategy rather than an afterthought, and why splitting an event by practice size might be the most underrated idea in dental networking right now.

In This Episode

00:00:45 – Introduction

00:01:00 – Life running dental events

00:09:45 – Getting into events

00:12:55 – Lessons from Open Rooms

00:15:45 – Starting Skin during Covid

00:21:15 – Going on Dragons Den

00:26:20 – Raising money for the first time

00:28:30 – Launching Dental Assembly

00:33:00 – Structuring the events

00:37:35 – Why fun matters

00:48:45 – Touchpoints beyond the event

00:50:55 – Blackbox thinking

01:01:45 – Favourite resource and book

01:04:40 – Fantasy dinner party

01:08:05 – Growing up and life outside events

About Ben Barter

Ben Barter is co-founder of Dental Assembly, an events business connecting dental groups with suppliers, and previously spent nine years at Open Rooms and Dental Forum. He also co-founded Skin, a price comparison app for beauty products that secured investment on Dragons Den, before returning to dental events full time.