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2025 Symposium Speakers
Doug Fettig, CPA, MBA
Dental Business Speaker and Leadership Coach
Despite Doug’s CPA and MBA academic achievements, he believes the best decision he ever made was dropping out of college at 20 years old. After working for a year, he bought a one-way ticket to Hamburg, Germany where he began hitchhiking around Europe. That incredible time led to years of countless opportunities to authentically connect with humanity, and it changed Doug’s perception of the world permanently. When he returned to college and eventually to the traditional workforce, he forged an appreciation of people’s unique strengths and individual contributions. And how thinking like a CEO and leading/living with an abundant mindset becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Now, Doug has over two decades of experience in business and dental industry consulting, combined with his deep desire to understand people’s passions through sincere connections. As a dental business advisor, he brings his engaging, humorous, and entertaining speaking style to dental seminars, study clubs, and vendor forums around the country. This experience has made him skilled at helping dentists shift their mindsets and grow thriving practices, while creating the retirement of their dreams.
Rick Garofolo
CEO/PRESIDENT - Dental Practice Mechanics
Rick Garofolo is a speaker, author, consultant, and Founder of The Dental Practice Mechanics with nearly 30 years of experience in business management and compliance. Rick’s unique experience comes from a combination of years of successful business ownership with advertising agencies, PR firms, publishing companies, multiple magazines, restaurants, bakeries, a chain of barber shops, and commercial and residential real estate investments coupled with his years of experience in the dental industry as a consultant and dental business owner. He is the author of Driving Your Business, produces Drive Live (a daily podcast on dental business topics), and runs the Dental Billing, Coding, and Insurance Academy Facebook group.
Robert McNamara, MD, FAAEM
Professor and Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine, Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University
Past President of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine
Chief Medical Officer, AAEM Physician Group
Robert McNamara, MD, FAAEM received his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in 1982 and then completed his residency in Emergency Medicine at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. He stayed on as faculty at MCP and was the residency program director until he departed for Temple University School of Medicine in 1999. At Temple, Dr. McNamara along with his faculty was successful in the creation of a full academic department of EM in 2001 and he currently serves as Chairman at Temple University Hospital, the busiest Level 1 Trauma center in the Delaware Valley. His scholarly contributions include over 100 peer-reviewed articles and abstracts and numerous textbook chapters. He was involved in the first studies bringing intra-osseous infusion and magnesium therapy for asthma to the attention of the EM community.
Nationally, Dr. McNamara is a leading figure in the specialty of Emergency Medicine. He has been active in leadership roles within a number of medical societies but is best known for his achievements as a founder of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM). Dr. McNamara served as AAEM’s President from 1996 until 2002. Under his leadership, the organization gained national and international stature while representing board-certified emergency physicians. In 2015, he became the Chief Medical Officer of the newly created AAEM Physician Group which seeks to preserve physician-owned practices in Emergency Medicine.
Dr. McNamara currently serves as the Premier Open Coach of the US National Dragon Boat Team. Teams under his direction have won 161 medals at the World Championships. He was inducted into the International Dragon Boat Federation Hall of Fame in 2023. Dr. McNamara was born and raised in Philadelphia and currently resides in Lafayette Hill, PA.
Sandy Pardue
Director of Consulting - Classic Practice Resources
Sandy Pardue is a keynote speaker, author, and practice management consultant. She has assisted hundreds of doctors with practice expansion and staff development over the past 25 years. Dentistry Today Magazine has recognized Sandy as a Leader in Consulting every year since 2003. She shares practice management tips each week on her podcast, Dental Drill Bits.
Robert Spiel, MBA
CEO/President – Spiel Consulting and Dentist Partner Pros
Bob Spiel’s mission is building high-performance practices that deliver exceptional service while doing more, in less time with less stress. His firms, Dentist Partner Pros and Spiel Consulting transform general and specialty practices by building leaders at all levels — with a special focus on team building and partnering skills for owners and associates. He has been consulting, speaking, and coaching dentists and their teams for the past sixteen years.
Bob had over twenty-five years of business experience before getting into dentistry including being a hospital and surgical center CEO, as well as an operations director for two mid-cap firms. This taught Bob to see each need in a practice with a “systems orientation”, with an emphasis on teamwork, leadership, and communication to make the human systems flow.
He has spoken at Chicago Mid-winter, the Hinman, and AAOMS, is co-host of the podcast Just Say No to the DSO, faculty member for Dr. Gordon Christensen where he teaches a breakthrough course on leadership, as well as the author of: Flip Your Focus — Igniting People, Profits and Performance through Upside-down Leadership.
Bob and his bride Judene live in Lindon, Utah. They are the parents of 6 children and 18 grandchildren. Away from work, Bob loves volunteering, skiing, wake surfing, hiking, traveling, reading a great book in front of a beach, and playing games with his grandkids.
Ben Tuinei
President - Veritas Dental Resources
Third party payor negotiating, more specifically Dental Insurance Fee Negotiations, is still a foreign concept to dentists nationwide, and worldwide. Mr. Tuinei has spent the last 14 years improving and perfecting this relatively new effort in the Dental Business world and will be sharing a few secrets about how to effectively negotiate better fees with dental insurance companies in his lecture “3rd Party Payor Fee Negotiations”.
Mr. Tuinei began his dental career in 2007 while working for a small dental corporation in Phoenix Arizona managing all insurance related functions. He was hired as the Chief of 3rd Party Payor Operations. During his first few months, he created systems and operating protocols and restructured a 12 person billing department that improved collections from a low 65% to 98%. At the same time, Mr. Tuinei learned how to effectively negotiate with 3rd party payors that gave a boost in annual insurance related revenue of nearly 1 million dollars for a team of only 10 general dentists. Mr. Tuinei’s early experience in negotiating with 3rd party payors caught the attention of other large group practices and hundreds of solo dental practitioners in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Colorado. Consequently, he unintentionally discovered an under-served section of the dental industry: 3rd party payor negotiating (aka insurance fee negotiating). Mr. Tuinei opened Optimum Dental Solutions in September 2009 to serve the needs of dentists who were actively seeking assistance in improving their insurance reimbursements. In 2014 Optimum Dental Solutions was rebranded to Veritas Dental Resources. Veritas stands for truth and is a core value you will not find while dealing with dental insurance directly.
During its first 2 years in operation Optimum Dental Solutions contracted with over 400 dental practices influencing a combined $10 million in additional annual revenue increases by implementing Mr. Tuinei’s proprietary PPO optimization strategies and effective 3rd party payor negotiating. To date, Mr Tuinei has worked with over 7000 dentists influencing over 3 billion dollars of newly negotiated revenue for his clients. Mr Tuinei currently serves as the President of Veritas Dental Resources.
Mr. Tuinei is going on his 24nd year as a professional public speaker. He currently serves as the President of Veritas Dental Resources and sits on the Board of Directors for The Dental Business School, Business Ownership Mentoring of America, The Dental Leadership Academy, and a co-host on The Navigating Dental Insurance Podcast.
Mr. Tuinei has been recognized by several state Dental Associations and various dental study clubs as “The Authority” on PPO strategies and PPO fee Negotiating. Please see his most recent article in Aesthetic Dentistry Magazine titled “Play to Win” and his PPO Pandemic Strategy article in Dental Economics.