Dr. White Lead AGD with a ‘Servant’s Heart’
AGD President Connie L. White, DDS, FAGD, FACD, FADI, FICD, describes herself as a consensus-builder with a servant’s heart. The combination of her multifaceted professional experience, her leadership philosophy and her passion for serving makes her the perfect person to take on the challenge of AGD presidency, and her goals to advance the organization’s missions during the next year show everything is full steam ahead. White got her professional start earlier than most. When she was in the seventh grade, her mother, unable to afford the orthodontic work White needed, negotiated a deal with the local general dentist — White would do odd jobs around the clinic after school like cleaning floors, and, in return, he would provide her orthodontic care for free. Even after her treatment was complete, White continued working part time through high school and every summer break during college, graduating from floors to front desk work and, later, chairside assisting. After finishing her bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), she immediately enrolled in the UMKC School of Dentistry.
“I really loved the interactions with people, and that’s what drove me to be a dentist,” White said. “Plus, that’s how I grew up — in a dental office. I really haven’t known anything else in my adult life other than dentistry, and it all happened because of my malocclusion.”
White is currently interim clinical dean at UMKC. Her path toward teaching began during dental school. “I was selected to help in a few of the preclinical labs, and I found that I really loved teaching,” she said. “I fell in love with the whole aspect of mentoring. Mentoring is one of the single biggest things we can do to help the next generation. There aren’t enough good mentors. People need guidance, and they’re starved for it.”
After completing her DDS, White earned a summer fellowship teaching position at the UMKC School of Dentistry, after which she was offered a full-time position. She moved through the ranks as a professor, achieved tenure and, in March 2019, was appointed interim clinical dean.
“I’ve stayed at the School of Dentistry for almost 40 years,” White said. “I just jumped right in and never left. There were a few other opportunities along the way that I could have done, but I loved the variability in my position here. I’m able to practice, teach, do research, have community involvement — I’ve had every aspect of dentistry at my fingertips.”
The same variability that kept White fulfilled in her career also gives her a well-rounded perspective on the myriad issues facing AGD’s members. Serving the needs of a new group of diverse students each year — not to mention patients — has translated into leadership strategies that emphasize compassionate listening and thorough consensus-building.
“Anyone who’s ever spent time at a state-supported school of dentistry learns quickly that you work with a lot of people with different opinions, and you need to be able to work through that to succeed,” she said. “You have to be a consensus-builder. That means being a good listener, able to hear all sides of an issue and identify what’s at its heart.
“You have to talk it out and find pieces of solutions that work for everyone, then turn those into a kind of mosaic. The solution has to be something that everyone has had a part in and can at least be willing to work with. Sometimes — as leaders and especially as dentists — we are frozen in indecision because we want to make something perfect, but we don’t have every question answered. I’ll often say, ‘We’re not married to it, but let’s give it a try, and we can reconsider it later if it’s not working.’ I’ve worked with leaders before who were not capable of making a decision, and that’s frustrating for the people you lead. Some people like to sit on the fence, and if you’re a natural people-pleaser like me, it’s hard not to do that. But it’s part of growing into leadership. You have to just lead — make the final decision, and have faith that it’s the right one.”
White, whose involvement with AGD started as a liaison to the UMKC School of Dentistry for the Missouri AGD, has a number of goals for her presidency.
“One of AGD’s top goals is reevaluating our membership,” she said. “We can’t continue to do what we’ve always done and expect a different result. The environment around us has changed. Practice models have changed, government intervention in our practices has changed, the people we represent have changed, and we have to change, too. We’ve been discussing implementing a tiered membership model that would allow us to give people choices instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. We can be creative with our membership and allow people to choose what benefits are important to them.”
Another goal of White’s pertains to the organizational structure of AGD and the distribution of its resources.
“For the benefit of our members, we have to make our national AGD more nimble,” she said. “We have created a model of governmental structure that is incredibly complex. We’re top-heavy, and we need to be able to make decisions that affect our entire membership more quickly. We need to bring our resources back to our constituencies to support those who serve AGD at the local level and drive our membership. It’s about building where we started. We need to reengage our membership. I would love to see more constituencies and regions hire support staff.”
White also has a number of advocacy goals.
“It’s hard to deal with insurance intervention in our practices that dictates what you can or cannot do for your patients,” said White. “AGD is actively working to support repeal of the McCarran–Ferguson Act so that general dentists have a fair share nationally in the insurance industry. We also have to stay diligent on our workforce issues. We have worked on the issue of midlevel providers and where they fit into what we do as general dentists — I contend that underserved areas would be better served if we put one of my dental students in a community health center after graduation and supported his or her student loan payback rather than placing a midlevel provider with less training. We also need to do more in response to the campaigns against fluoride. Before the introduction of fluoride to our municipal water supplies, we had people who lost all their teeth in their 20s. Fluoride was a total game-changer for oral healthcare in America, and that is now at stake.
“Do-it-yourself dentistry is another huge issue right now. Our patients are buying oral appliances over the internet to move their teeth, and we’re seeing more and more cases of people who have been devastated. We have a responsibility to advocate on behalf of the patients we treat and educate them, because many just don’t know the risks involved.”
White became president during the AGD annual meeting Nov. 10, 2019, and will serve a one-year-term.
“I have a servant’s heart, and I want to give everything that I have,” White said. “That’s something I will always work hard to do, for AGD especially. There are so many arenas in which AGD must stand up. Our patients and the dentists we serve demand it, and they certainly deserve it.”