Dentist Launches New Practice From Scratch Amid Pandemic

RESTON, VA — When Dr. Rosemary Ahanor was looking for a place to open her new business, she considered Arlington and Alexandria. But the sense of community she found in Reston really won her over.

"Reston was just the right place for me, because I think it's a growing community," she said. "It's very amazing for families and there are a lot of businesses around, small business owners like myself. So I just figured it was going to be the best place for me to open my business."

Ahanor was born in Nigeria and relocated to the U.S. more than a decade ago. Although she trained as a dentist in her home country, she went back to school at New York University.

Ahanor and her husband, who is a psychiatrist, relocated to the Washington, D.C. area after he got in the area. She then did her residency at St. Elizabeths.

After working at various locations in Maryland and D.C., Ahanor decided to open Aglow Dental Studio in Reston last August.

"My husband used to do local meetings in parts of Northern Virginia," Ahanor said. "We would drive down together. During the weekends, I would just drive around and get to know the neighborhood and things like that. I had friends in Reston and Herndon."

Construction started on the Aglow Dental Studio in March 2020 — the same week Gov. Ralph Northam ordered the statewide shutdown to stop the spread of COVID-19. In spite of that, Ahanor was not concerned about starting a new business during the pandemic.

"It had been in the works since 2018, so we already had the ball rolling before the pandemic," she said. "Even with the pandemic, we just had to keep things moving."

During the planning stages, Ahanor and her team instituted new guidelines so that they could open the business on-time with all of the CDC's COVID-19 safety protocols in place.

Rather than take over an existing practice, Ahanor decided to open her own.

"I wanted to start mine from scratch because I wanted it to be my vision," she said. "I had an idea of what I wanted. I wanted to practice a certain way and just provide quality dental care to patients and the community. It's like building a house or buying an existing house. You can buy an existing house and do some renovations or you can just start from scratch with your vision and how you want things to be. That is what I chose."

Ahanor acknowledged that there were challenges about starting her practice from scratch.

"The good thing is that I'm in a community where there's so much value for oral health, I'm skilled in what I do, and we have marketing in place," she said. "We're partnered with a local charity organization called Kids R First. For every new patient that we see, we make a donation to the charity to help pay for school supplies for kids in need."

Although the business started out slowly, things began to pick up in November.

"We've been attracting patients and people have been spreading the word," Ahanor said. "We accept major insurance companies. In addition to that, we have our own in-house membership plan, which has helped out a lot of people that may have some financial restraints when it comes to getting their oral healthcare check."

Located at 11150 Sunset Hills Road, Aglow Dental Studio is a general dentistry, offering a variety of in-house services, including cleanings, extractions, root canals, and Invisalign.

"We make sure that when patients come in, we take our time to educate them," Ahanor said. "We don't do just, 'You have this problem and this is the treatment for it.' We try to create a relationship whereby you take ownership of your oral health with all the information that we give to you."

One of the reasons Ahanor decided to open an office in Reston was that wanted to become a part of the community.

"I didn't just want to be a business owner, just come in, get work done, and the go back to wherever I live," she said.

As Ahanor was developing her business, she became a member of both the Greater Reston Chamber of Commerce and the Northern Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce. Through those organizations, she was able to meet many business owners in the area, share experiences and bounce ideas off of them.

"It's really important," she said, about becoming involved in the business community. "People have to trust you. People have to see you as a human being first, before they see you as a business owner. You have to create that personal relationship and you have to be relatable as well."

It's not enough for a business owner just to sell or provide services, people want to get to know the person behind the business, Ahanor said.

"The days of where you just come and see a patient and leave, with the way things are going now, I don't think that's the best," she said. "It's very important for you to have a good relationship with your patients."