Now a thriving community serving thousands and employing more than 30 committed team members, Reynolda Smiles was not always the bustling practice you now enjoy. Armed with a freshly minted dental license and hopes for building a meaningful life, (a very young) Andy Geer and his small family moved from UNC-Chapel Hill to Winston-Salem in the summer of 2002. At that same time, Dr. James Ziglar was dissolving his small dental practice to enter retirement, yet did not want to leave his patients, his team without jobs, or the practice without a provider he could trust. Among the original few team members were Deanna Ivester and Cristi Nixon, who are still with us today (they would love to share with you the tales of our very meager beginnings). Scrambling to find a new location to house the small team and few patients, Dr. Geer came across a small, crumbling building that would affectionately become known as the “Dental Shack”. For the next five days, the team joined him and his wife in the scrubbing, decorating, painting, and outfitting required to open a respectable dental office. What was once a drive-through car wash was transformed into a dental office. In September 2002, Dr. Geer hung his shingle on the building’s front, and the fledgling practice was born.
As the years passed, more patients dared to brave the Dental Shack, and more team members came onboard to help care for them. The personal nature of the care the patients received, the integrity of the team members, and their commitment to excellence, were all things that caused people to flock to the crumbling space. Eventually, it became clear that there were too many patients for one dentist to comfortably provide for, so in 2010 Dr. Geer began the search for another dentist. A former classmate and friend, Dr. Joel Switzer, uprooted his family from sunny California and joined him back in NC. Like most growing things, the practice needed an increasing amount of space, and the Dental Shack was becoming uncomfortably cramped. A small lot only minutes away was purchased, and Dr. Geer and his wife began designing a state-of-the-art office that better reflects the practice’s excellence. At this point, the practice changed its name from simply the names of its practicing clinicians to a more inclusive “Reynolda Smiles”.
By January 2013, the new office was complete. The move into this space was a blissful but busy transition. The office honed its practice philosophy and vision statement and focused on community and team building in addition to patient care. We believe that a happy, healthy work community translates to a better experience for patients. This philosophy has created a thriving environment for those employed at Reynolda Smiles and for the patients as well. Additional education among the doctors has enabled us to provide an increasingly broad range of services, such as dental implants, bone grafts, and Invisalign braces. We continue to use the latest technology and have invested in things such as a 3-D CT scanner.
As the practice continued its transition of filling whatever space there was to fill, Dr. Boyte, Dr. Vrikkis, and Dr. Speer all came onboard the next few years, as did many hygienists, assistants, sterilization technicians, and front desk members. Though Reynolda Smiles has grown exponentially, the simple, caring philosophy that began in the Dental Shack and has propelled the practice forward remains unchanged.