10 Under 10: International dentist pays her mentorship experiences forward
Mentorship has been a thread throughout the dental career of 2024 ADA 10 Under 10 Award winner Ana Keohane, D.M.D. — from Barranquilla, Colombia, to Boston.
During her career journey, mentors appeared at key moments and guided her along the path to where she is today.
Dr. Keohane’s first mentor was her older sister, who is also a dentist and owned a practice in Colombia. During her teenage years, Dr. Keohane would shadow her sister and assist her with patients.
“And since then, I said, ‘This is what I want. I want to be a dentist,’” she said. “I was maybe 16 years old, and I really loved the way patients were very thankful, and I really had a feeling that this was what I want in my future, to help the community, make them happy and change their lives.”
To attend dental school in Colombia, a college degree isn’t required, so Dr. Keohane enrolled in dental school right after high school.
“That’s great if you know what you want to do in life, like I did,” she said. “But the minute I started dental school, I loved it. I loved the school, the teachers, the classes, everything.”
After a four-year dental program, Colombia requires one year of community service. Dr. Keohane found a perfect fit in the community by working as a dentist at a local army base, providing dental services to cadets, soldiers and officers. That experience reinforced the feeling she had in her sister’s practice, seeing the gratitude and impact her profession has on others.
When her time with the army ended, she thought about opportunities outside of Colombia, including international dental programs.
But first, she decided to pause her career and join her twin brother in Boston to learn English on a three-month student visa.
“I wasn’t thinking of being in Boston long term and redoing my career here, but I came and I fell in love with Boston,” Dr. Keohane said. “Boston has a multicultural environment, and I felt safe there. In Colombia, unfortunately, you have to be careful, but in Boston, people were happy and free and I loved that, so I decided to try and stay in Boston and be a dentist.”
That's how she met her second mentor: an international dentist in Boston, who came to the U.S. and established his own dental practice. Originally from India, Murad Padamsee, D.M.D., took Dr. Keohane under his wing and treated her as a colleague, even when her title was “assistant.” With limited English skills at that time, Dr. Keohane credits him for getting her on the path to practicing in the U.S.
“Thanks to him, I was able to continue my journey,” she said.
Before that journey could start, she had to decide between repeating dental school at a U.S. university so she could be fully licensed to practice or staying on a limited license.
To Dr. Keohane, the choice was clear, so on top of working in Dr. Padamsee’s dental practice, she studied for the required board exams, which were two separate tests at that time. She passed the exams and applied to the Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, where she was accepted in 2013 and completed a two-year program.
“I loved going back to dental school,” she said. “I felt like I was doing a very detailed, strong review of everything I learned in Colombia, and I learned more than that. But I felt that I was also more mature at this time, more serious and focused on what I was learning, so I really loved going back to school and doing those two years. I also met a lot of international dentists from all over the world there.”
That community of international dentists, each of whom were on a similar path to hers, kept her focused and driven to graduate.
While a student at Boston University, Dr. Keohane was a teaching assistant in the simulation center in the department of general dentistry. There she supervised students and procedures in the university clinic. The university’s commitment to community outreach programs also provided Dr. Keohane with the opportunity to get into the local Boston community.
As her second dental school graduation came closer, Dr. Keohane faced another choice: explore faculty opportunities at the university or go full time in practice to keep that one-on-one connection with her patients. Rather than pick, she decided to do both. Now, she works a few days each week at Boston University, and the rest of the week, she sees patients at a private practice, Everett Family Dental in Everett, Massachusetts.
“It gives me the best of both worlds,” she said. “At BU, you teach and learn from the students and other faculty; it keeps me young. But being at a practice gives me hands-on time with patients and allows me to see them happy.”
Her journey to this stage in her career has been heavily influenced by her mentors, and now, she is stepping into being one herself through her work at Boston University and the Massachusetts Hispanic Dental Association.
Having gone through the journey of being an international dentist in the U.S., Dr. Keohane recommends international dentists connect with their state dental societies and network within them. She also advises against relying just on internet resources, instead taking advantage of local resources.
Looking ahead to the next 10 years of her career, Dr. Keohane said she plans to stay at Boston University and be as active in community service as possible. For her, mentorship will also be a key part of this next era of her career. She wants to pay her mentorship experiences forward and demonstrate to the next generation what she has done and how they can do it too. She hopes they will choose to pay it forward as well.
But first, she’s indulging her love of travel with her first trip to Brazil.
Learn more about the 10 Under 10 Awards program at ADA.org/10Under10 and get inspired at SmileCon's Changemakers Celebration, which will recognize this year’s 10 Under 10 winners and other award recipients.
