Joseph Pantaleo (he/him)

Dentist, Founder and Chair, Tomorrow's Smile Today

Revered dentist and nonprofit founder; transforming lives by providing vital free dental care and pioneering the first dental unit in Kenyan wards—driven by an unwavering passion for service.

A child of Italian immigrants, Joseph Pantaleo was raised in a Franciscan culture that emphasized giving. This might be the root of his reverence for doctors. “I remember realizing,” he says, “that doctors could fix things for free, simply through expertise.” Pantaleo's path to NYU dental school was attended by an eagerness to serve; it was ironic, then, that his time there was marked by multiple rejections from overseas outreach programs. “Looking back,” he says, “I see that my teachers knew that I had to become a great clinician first.”

But during a 2013 internship featuring outreach work in Guatemala, Pantaleo found that the waiting—and the development of his own clinical expertise—made the experience that much more meaningful. Operating in a community without dentists, he felt the thrill he'd imagined as a child, the reward of providing something for free. Two years later, his nonprofit, Tomorrow's Smile Today (TST), was born, setting its sights on Kenya, where a bare-bones poverty existed within a healthcare vacuum.

TST's impact in Kenya has been extraordinary. Pantaleo has helped provide free dental care to hundreds of patients, many of them children. In fact, in 2022, TST built the first-ever dental unit in any ward in Kenya and has formed an official partnership with the Kenyan government, training and collaborating with local dentists. And while Pantaleo is considering how TST might expand within and beyond Kenya, he warns against thinking in terms of scale. “This isn't a business,” he says. “No one here takes a salary. You have to do this work from a place of love.”