Dr. Yuliya Salmeron

Dr. Yuliya Salmeron is an endodontist, practice owner, and business educator who helps dentists build profitable practices without letting the business consume their lives. She founded Edge Endodontics in Austin, Texas in December 2018, as a single mother with no dental network in the city and no formal business training, and she created Dental CEO to teach dentists the financial and leadership skills she had to learn after her clinical education was already finished.

As Foundation Dental Alliance faculty, she teaches what it actually takes to open a specialty practice from nothing, how to design a patient experience that dismantles dental fear instead of reinforcing it, and the business skills dental school never covers.

Dental school taught me how to diagnose and treat. It did not teach me how to build profit, lead a team, control overhead, or eliminate debt.

Dr. Yuliya Salmeron

From Russia to Dentistry

Dr. Salmeron grew up in Ulyanovsk, Russia, during the collapse of the Soviet Union. At 19 she left home with roughly $500, limited English, and no family or professional connections in the United States. She arrived in Cleveland, cleaned restaurants and homes, waited tables, and enrolled in community college.

She eventually earned admission to Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine and graduated at the top of her class in 2013 with seven academic honours, including induction into Omicron Kappa Upsilon, the Academy of General Dentistry Senior Dental Student Award, the Quintessence Award for clinical achievement in restorative dentistry, the Sherwood Hrutkay Award for excellence in endodontics, and the Dean's Clinical Scholarship Award. She earned every one of them while waiting tables and learning a language.

Her interest in dentistry grew out of fear rather than ambition. Dental treatment in Russia was often performed with little or no anesthesia, and she had her first root canal at nine or ten years old. The memory of that pain never left her. Years later, after working as a dental assistant, she realised she could become the kind of dentist she had needed as a child.

Becoming a Specialist

Dr. Salmeron completed an Advanced Education in General Dentistry program in Tucson, Arizona, and practised general dentistry there, including service to the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. She wanted the precise, high-stakes work of saving teeth other clinicians might give up on, so she completed a two-year endodontic residency through the Veterans Affairs Long Beach Healthcare System in California, treating complex cases in patients whose dental situations reflected years of systemic neglect.

One case she still speaks about involved a veteran with multiple root canals and dangerously poor blood sugar control. It took a dozen visits over six months before the bone finally healed around the roots.

I almost gave up. I didn't know if I could heal his teeth.

Dr. Yuliya Salmeron

The lesson she carried forward was simple. When it feels like this is it, keep going.

Building Edge Endodontics

Edge Endodontics opened in Southwest Austin in December 2018, designed around two priorities. Saving natural teeth, and reducing the fear patients associate with root canal treatment. Every operatory has a television, wifi headphones, hot towels, and comfortable chairs. The practice treats the patient as a guest, someone who can expect to be seen the same day they call in pain.

The clinical technology serves that philosophy. The EdgePRO laser uses light physics, sound energy, and microfluidic dynamics for minimally invasive treatment that eliminates up to 99 percent of bacteria in the root canal system. Cone beam CT imaging supports precise diagnosis and treatment planning, computerised digital radiography delivers significantly less radiation than conventional X-rays, and hospital-grade HEPA purification runs throughout the office.

The referral-based practice has since grown to include another endodontist, and it holds a near-perfect five-star standing across hundreds of patient reviews. Its growth depends entirely on the trust of general dentists who refer their patients and expect them to receive skilled, compassionate care.

• Incisal Edge 40 Under 40, America's Best Young Dentists, 2019
• Woman to Watch, Austin Woman magazine, 2019
• America's Best Dentists, 2021, 2023, and 2024
• Featured on KVUE ABC, ATX-tra, and American HealthFront
• Member of the American Association of Endodontists, the American Dental Association, the Texas Dental Association, and the Capital Area Dental Society
• Speaks English, Russian, and Spanish

From Practice Owner to Dental CEO

Building Edge Endodontics taught Dr. Salmeron that clinical skill alone doesn't prepare a dentist to run a business. She learned those things the hard way, the only way available to her, and then recognised that thousands of dentists were graduating into private practice or buying into one and running straight into the same gap she had crossed alone.

She created Dental CEO to close it. Her platform includes The Cash-Flow Dental Practice, a course built to turn a practice into a high-profit business, and the Cash Flow Blueprint, a free entry point for dentists just starting to understand the business side of what they own. Her signature framework, the Five Shifts in a Female Dentist's Life, walks through what actually turns a stalled, high-effort practice into one producing both freedom and results.

She speaks particularly to women in dentistry who are carrying clinical responsibility, business ownership, family, and personal health at the same time. Her position is consistent. Exhaustion isn't proof of success, a business reflects the identity of the person who built it, and lasting change starts with the beliefs and habits of the person leading the practice. Her commitment to personal discipline extends beyond dentistry, and she competed in the women's bikini division at the 2024 NPC Texas State Championships.

Faculty Focus

Dr. Salmeron's work with Foundation Dental Alliance includes:

• Building a specialty dental practice from scratch
• Endodontic diagnosis and saving natural teeth
• Creating a patient experience that reduces dental fear
• Building and protecting referral relationships as a specialist
• Practice profitability, cash flow, and overhead control
• Debt reduction and financial discipline
• Team leadership and accountability
• Business development for women in dentistry
• Preventing burnout while building a successful practice
• Creating greater freedom through practice ownership

Dr. Salmeron became the doctor she needed as a child, the one who understood fear because she had felt it in a dental chair without mercy. She became the business mentor she lacked when she opened her practice with no network and no plan. She brings dentists the perspective of someone who built her education, her specialty practice, and her business platform without a roadmap for any of it.

Booking and Contact

• Base: Austin, Texas
• Practice: Edge Endodontics, Southwest Austin
• Platform: Dental CEO
• Available for: Luxury Dental Retreats, Foundation Dental Mastermind implementation sessions, keynote presentations, and Foundation Dental Podcast appearances