Dr. Tonya Fuqua, a Southlake dentist and founder and program manager of the nonprofit Save a Smile dental program in Tarrant County, is now part of an elite group of dentists worldwide. Fuqua was inducted into the prestigious College of Fellows for the International College of Dentists (ICD) at its 85th annual convocation in San Francisco, California.
ICD is a leading international honor society of dentists which represents 11,000 Fellows in 123 countries and has been honoring the world’s leading dentists since 1920. The prestigious title of FICD (Fellow, International College of Dentists) is granted in recognition of an individual dentist’s “outstanding professionalism, achievement, meritorious service and dedication to the continued progress of dentistry for the benefit of humankind.”
In addition to serving patients at Fuqua Advanced Dental in Southlake, Texas, with her husband, prosthodontist Dr. Steven Fuqua, Dr. Tonya Fuqua is the director of the Save a Smile program led by Cook Children’s Medical Center. Since 2003, Save a Smile has provided more than 93,000 in-school dental screenings for at-risk children. Nearly 5,000 children have received comprehensive dental care from volunteer dentists, with more than $8.7 million in services delivered. Fuqua also served as director of the Child Study Center Dental Clinic, led the legislative committee for the Children’s Oral Health Coalition and chaired the annual Give Kids a Smile benefit for the Fort Worth District Dental Society, benefiting hundreds of local children.
Fuqua was recently selected into the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry’s VI Cohort to participate in the Leadership Institute at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. The program will include strategy formulation, decision making and risk analysis, negotiation, crisis management, finance and business law. Besides honing critical thinking skills that will have a direct impact on her daily professional life, Leadership Institute will provide Fuqua with the tools to make an even more effective impact in her community and the broader dental profession.