Dr. Lincoln Harris

Dr. Lincoln Harris is the founder and chief executive officer of RipeGlobal, a clinical education company that ships a fully integrated simulation kit to a dentist's own practice so training happens at their own chair, with their own handpiece and burs, in the ergonomic setup where they treat patients every day. Completed work is reviewed under high magnification by faculty, with feedback delivered through the cloud. RipeGlobal reports more than 10,000 active learners across 35 countries, supported by over 80 educators and more than 450 hours of continuing dental education.

He built the company on a single conviction drawn from aviation. Pilots earn competence through structured, high-repetition practice under real pressure long before anyone trusts them with an aircraft. Dentists are trusted with a patient's health from their earliest days in the chair, and almost nobody trains them that way.

As Foundation Dental Alliance faculty, Dr. Harris teaches how clinical confidence actually gets built. His work covers repetition-based skill development, restorative and multidisciplinary dentistry, treatment planning and case acceptance, associate development, and the human factors that cause capable clinicians to underperform under pressure.

A Clinical Career Built in Regional Australia

Dr. Harris grew up near Bundaberg, Queensland, and earned his Bachelor of Dental Science with First Class Honours from the University of Queensland in 1998. After completing a Queensland Health scholarship obligation in Roma and Bundaberg, he opened Harris Dental Boutique in Bargara in 2000. It was the coastal town's first private dental practice, and it's still there, built around a philosophy the practice calls Blame-Free Dentistry and carrying more than 400 patient reviews.

With no specialists practicing within a three-hour drive, Dr. Harris had to develop a genuinely broad clinical skill set. Restorative dentistry, prosthodontics, orthodontics, implantology, and hard and soft tissue grafting. He kept training throughout Australia, the United States, and Europe, and became both a Diplomate and Fellow of the International Congress of Oral Implantologists. He's among a small group of dentists who handcraft high-quality ceramic veneers directly in their own clinic rather than outsourcing the work.

That clinical breadth shaped his view of dental education. Dentists usually leave school with substantial knowledge and nowhere near enough supervised repetition to use it confidently in front of a patient.

Training Dentists the Way Pilots Are Trained

Dr. Harris began teaching internationally in 2006 and formalized that work in 2013 as Restoring Excellence, an in-person hands-on training company that ran programs across Australia, New Zealand, North America, Europe, and Asia. Alongside it he built one of the largest dental groups online, eventually more than 85,000 members, where dentists posted full clinical protocols rather than before-and-after photos and invited direct peer critique. The name RipeGlobal traces back to that era as an acronym for Restorative, Implant, Practice, Excellence.

Around 2015 he began drawing the comparison that would become the intellectual foundation of his career. Pilots spend hundreds of hours rehearsing difficult situations in simulators before they ever carry passengers. Dentists are expected to develop comparable judgment and technical control while treating actual patients.

If pilots were taught the same way that dentists were taught, a lot of them would die.

Dr. Lincoln Harris

In 2016 he moved the didactic portion of his courses online ahead of the hands-on components, one of the earliest moves of its kind anywhere in dental education.

Five Days

In March 2020, COVID-19 closed Harris Dental Boutique and Restoring Excellence in the same week, an abrupt halt to two decades of clinical and educational work.

We can either sit and cry, or we can go big. For years I'd complained about not having enough time. Now I had enough time.

Dr. Lincoln Harris

Five days after Australia's first lockdown, Dr. Harris and his brother Cam Harris founded RipeGlobal in Bargara. The goal was simple and ambitious in equal measure, which was to deliver real hands-on clinical training to any dentist, anywhere, without requiring a flight, a hotel room, or a week away from practice. He recorded a short video explaining the idea and posted it online. Within a few months RipeGlobal had sold one million dollars worth of education, launched entirely during a global shutdown, with no physical office and no in-person events. The company has since invested roughly five million dollars into research and development.

How RipeGlobal Works

• Learning Membership. An on-demand library of more than 450 hours of CPD and CE content with career-tracking tools.
• Fellowships. One- to two-year structured programs in Restorative Dentistry, Modern Implantology, and Modern Aligners, blending online theory, cloud simulation, and live patient case guidance. The Restorative Dentistry Fellowship leads to an EduQual Level 7 Diploma in Complex and Aesthetic Dentistry.
• Restorative Master Series. Launched in 2026 with focused modules in crown preparations, modern onlay and overlay, posterior and anterior composites, and anterior crowns and provisionals.
• Rapid Efficient Treatment Planning. A two-day in-person intensive Dr. Harris personally teaches in cities around the world, focused on treatment planning communication, case acceptance, and clinical efficiency.
• Implant Live Patient Internship. A hands-on live patient immersion for dentists advancing their implant training.
• Dental Associate PowerUp Program. A four-month enterprise program for group practices and dental support organizations, built around three sequential phases and backed by a production increase guarantee for participating associates.

In February 2026, RipeGlobal published results from a completed Dental Associate PowerUp Program with a multistate United States dental organization operating more than 200 locations. RipeGlobal reported that hourly production rose 70 percent, that the average improvement reached $155 per clinical hour, and that the projected annualized same-store revenue impact exceeded $5 million.

Recognition and Reach

• RipeGlobal operates in 35 countries with more than 10,000 active learners and a faculty of over 80 educators
• 2021 Business of the Year, Bundaberg Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards
• 2021 Hinkler Innovation Series winner, an award honouring the legacy of pioneering aviator Bert Hinkler
• Enterprise partnerships including Pacific Smiles Group, one of Australia's leading dental support organizations
• Guest on the Group Dentistry Now Show and the Becker's Dental and DSO Review Podcast
• Speaking at the ADSO Summit in Chicago, June 2026, presenting 5 Keys to Associate Performance
• Diplomate and Fellow, International Congress of Oral Implantologists, 2016

A Philosophy Built on Human Factors

Dr. Harris's educational philosophy draws directly from human factors science, the same discipline behind modern aviation and military training. He identifies three forces that cause skilled clinicians to underperform under pressure. Feeling overwhelmed when a task exceeds perceived capacity. Fear that produces hesitant or non-committal movement. A teaching method built on slow repetition in low-pressure settings that never builds real pressure-tolerant skill.

His answer is short, intense, time-capped repetition that lets a dentist fail safely in simulation until the skill becomes automatic. He draws a hard line between courage and confidence. Confidence sits on the far side of fear rather than before it, which means real growth requires practicing the very thing that feels difficult, again and again, in a setting safe enough to fail.

He's candid about where the profession is heading. Artificial intelligence will surface more treatment opportunities and robotics will reshape parts of dentistry within the next decade. Neither one solves the deeper problem if the dentist behind it lacks the skill to convert what's found into care that's planned, communicated, and delivered.

Competence will always be in fashion.

Dr. Lincoln Harris

Faculty Focus

Dr. Harris's work with Foundation Dental Alliance covers:

• Clinical confidence and procedural competence
• Restorative and multidisciplinary dentistry
• Treatment planning, patient communication, and case acceptance
• Simulation-based clinical education and repetition under pressure
• Associate dentist development and clinical training for group practices
• Human factors and performance when the pressure is real

Dr. Harris looked at a broken training model and quietly built the replacement. That instinct is why he belongs on this faculty. He teaches from the chair rather than the lectern, and he's spent more than twenty-five years proving that competence is earned through repetition rather than lectures.

Booking and Contact

• Base: Bargara, Queensland, Australia
• Company: RipeGlobal
• Practice: Harris Dental Boutique
• Available for: Luxury Dental Retreats, Foundation Dental Mastermind implementation sessions, keynote presentations, and Foundation Dental Podcast appearances