I grew up in Puerto Rico and came to the University of Central Florida to study, first earning a bachelor's degree in Advertising and Public Relations here before life took me into marketing and communications for over a decade. I built brands and told stories for organizations like Visit Orlando, Universal Orlando Resort, and Travel + Leisure Co., and along the way I got comfortable reading audiences and figuring out how to earn their attention and trust quickly. At some point, though, I started wanting to put that same instinct toward something that mattered more directly to the person standing in front of me, rather than an audience I'd never meet, and coming back to the University of Central Florida for a second degree felt like the natural place to make that change.

Photography, which I still do on the side, ended up teaching me more about that instinct than any campaign ever did, since a good portrait depends entirely on trust and people have to feel comfortable enough to let their guard down before you ever press the shutter. I noticed something similar the first time I shadowed a periodontist, observing procedures like scaling and root planing and seeing firsthand what advanced gum disease looks like after years untreated. Something clicked for me that day, and dentistry stopped being an abstract idea and became a real decision.

Since then, shadowing across five specialties, working as a dental assistant, and volunteering with organizations that provide dental care to people who couldn't otherwise afford it has reinforced the same thing again and again: technical skill matters enormously, but so does the ability to read a person and make them feel safe once they're in the chair. That combination of precision and genuine trust is what I'm building my entire career around, and it's the same thing I hope to bring into every patient relationship once I'm the one in the chair beside them.