Dr. Yasir Khan

Born and raised in Miami, Dr. Yasir Khan isn’t the only medical profession in the family. “My parents were a little surprised at first that I ended up going into dentistry,” he says, “but they came around to it. They realized it’s a good thing to have a dentist in the family.”

But even Dr. Khan thought dentistry was a little strange at first. “To be honest, in the beginning I thought, do I really want to be in someone’s mouth all day?” he says. After shadowing a respected family dentist as an undergrad student, however, “I realized it’s about so much more than that: the interactions with patients, the relationships you develop, the changes you can actually make on peoples’ lives. It sounds kind of basic to say, but helping people like that is really the most rewarding thing.”

For Dr. Khan, everything in dentistry comes back to trust: “Building a long-lasting relationship is the most important thing,” he says. “Treating you as if you were a member of my family. Because then we’ll trust each other, you’ll feel good about coming back for your follow-up appointments or other procedures, and you’ll never feel like you’re being taken advantage of. That’s what it’s all about.”