Allison Norris:  Living beyond definitions, breaking boundaries

You would have probably come across those interviews in the media where the famous singer says something like “Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I was going to be a singer.” This voice fades into the background while multiple pictures are shown where she holds her toy karaoke set in a cute way as a child.

Maybe some of you must have also looked at a proud mother in an interview saying, “Ever since he was a boy, he played with his toy stethoscope he got for his birthday! We never for once doubted that he would be a doctor.”

Well, there are some among us who only learn to dream later in life. Some of us realize what we want is miles away, only after we reach our presumed goal. If you ever chanced upon the book, “ The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold, there is a quote, “Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.” resonates with the professional life of Allison Norris.

Who is Allison Norris?

Allison Norris began her professional career in December 2007 as a private dental clinician. A little more than a decade later, in 2018 she made a leap of faith that completely changed the course of her career.

Allison now has coached hundreds of dental hygiene teams across the Southeast, built a consulting division at a large dental billing organization, and successfully launched an orthodontic tech startup as the Director of Development.

After making the decision to resign from the startup, she launched The Dentele Group. “My professional career began in 2007 as a dental hygienist. I took a leap of faith in 2018 and left clinical dentistry. Since leaving clinical dentistry, I have spoken for a dental pharmaceutical company, coached hundreds of dental hygiene teams across the Southeast, built a consulting division at a large dental billing organization, and successfully launched an orthodontic tech startup as the Director of Development. After making the decision to resign from the startup, I launched The Dentele Group on a whim. It's been wildly successful and a bit of a whirlwind.”

After braving through whirlwinds for the past two years she’s finally made her way into the avenue of success.

Beaming with pride, she told us about the Dentele group, a non-clinical recruiting agency that aims to place dental industry professionals into non-clinical careers. Allison’s mantra for success is the discipline for procedure and steadfastness with which she has built her dream company.

She is a stringent leader who does not take any chances when it comes to the screening process. She ensures that her candidates go through a thorough pre-screening process. After this, an assessment that is skill-based, as well as personality profile-based is also taken before bringing any of her candidates aboard.

She finds that the only challenge she faced and still faces is having to correspond with candidates who have multiple offers on the table. With the level of expertise she holds, Allison has had only one mishire so far which was immediately remedied by her.

Allison strongly believes that the two ingredients that make a good relationship among clients are, truthfulness and integrity.  She also believes that seasoning this relationship with a spoonful of commitment on anything that needs amends helps strengthen the bond.

When we asked about Allison’s approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion, here’s what she thinks,

“We are mindful of our job and verbiage and we also target sources where there is a diverse talent pool.”

Allison takes pride in systemic procedures and opines that TA specialists and HR leaders can reduce a great deal of stress by sticking to the systems and protocols along with ample assistance from automation and AI as much as possible.

As a woman leader, her strength is derived from actions rather than words. From being referred to as “just a hygienist'' to being the founder of a company, if actions speak louder than words then Allison’s actions have managed to seal words back into the mouths of naysayers.

Her encouraging words for the she-leaders of tomorrow are, “Be strong and confident in who you are. Don't ever let someone else's opinion of you change your opinion of yourself.’

Allison believes in looking beyond tags placed by others to find her best self. No wonder, she has etched a well-deserved place among our inspirational leaders at “HeR Talks”.