“What’s your advice to a person wanting to make a difference in the world?”
- All you need to make a difference is: to care.
- Know your why.
- Face challenges head on, knowing you have an innate human ability to persist through difficulty.
You’ve got this.
Thank you to Southstart and Future Anything to be part of the Bright Ideas Summit!
I love speaking to young people. I love how impressionable they are, how they are open to challenging their thinking and sharing their views with the world around them.
The Bright Ideas Summit led students across Australia on a deep dive into brainstorming problems they could see in the world and how think innovatively to solve it.
The problem that I pursued fixing, was one broader than just looking after teeth, it was inclusion.
Inclusion is the driving value behind what I do. Inclusion is why I care for people’s oral health.
The story begins with my dad, who was born in China. As a child he had a fever and was prescribed tetracycline antibiotics. The tetracycline incorporated itself into his chemical tooth structure as his teeth were developing. And it led to permanent black staining of his teeth. This condition can’t be fixed with whitening, though he did try that and it led to ongoing severe cold sensitivity whenever he eats.
Dad moved to Australia when he was 26 years old, excited to start a new life in a country full of opportunities – not realising how much of a barrier this tetracycline staining would be in pursuing the life he wanted to lead. Watching his struggle had a profound impact on me. I saw how being unable to eat without pain affected his nutrition and general health. I saw how his smile affected the way people treated him – he was denied employment opportunities and felt socially isolated. He didn’t smile with those around him, withdrawing from people’s judgement and feeling shame about how his teeth looked. This exclusion crushed his self-esteem and with it, his mental health.
So that’s how I learnt, that your mouth is the gateway to your body and your overall health.
And your smile, is your gateway to being included in society.
That’s why I became a dentist, to empower people to live a full life where they can eat, speak, and smile freely. To open people’s gateway to being included in society by helping them smile, so they can feel socially accepted and find a job and live to their full potential.
During my pursuit of this mission, I drew upon more of my family’s lived experience – my youngest brother, Arron, was diagnosed with autism and my dear grandmother battled against cancer. I saw their conditions create more challenges in their life, in addition to challenges with oral health, and saw the barriers to finding a dentist who had the skills to help them. And that’s what drove me to become a specialist in special needs dentistry.
Through sharing my story, I hope to encourage you think a little differently the next time you see someone smile. Realise that your smile goes beyond health, to helping you reaching your full potential as a human being, and feel included in our society.