Dr. Ashley Joves was born in Marysville, OH and moved to the Bay Area, CA at the age of 4.  She graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Psychobiology from UC Davis in 2004 and spent one year working in a dental practice before she left for dental school in 2005.  It was always a dream of hers to live in Manhattan, so she knew that NYU College of Dentistry would be her top choice.  It was then that Dr. Ashley truly fell in love with food, culture and the arts.  She graduated from NYUCD in 2009 and completed a one-year general practice residency at Abington Memorial Hospital, just outside Philadelphia, PA.  She received extensive training in all areas of general dentistry and learned more in that year than all the years of dental school combined.  She has worked in several private practices, from east coast to west coast, and has seen the good, the bad and the ugly in practice and patient management.  Dr. Ashley has always been a dreamer, but it took her this long (8 years to be exact) to finally act on her dreams.  Last month, she announced via FB Live that she was officially doing a start-up, and that she was not going to “let fear and uncertainty” hold her back anymore.  That post went viral and has been viewed almost 10,000 times.  Dr. Ashley is documenting her startup journey all in real-time on Facebook and Instagram.  She hopes that her journey can provide value to anyone thinking about doing a startup, in this day in age where everyone thinks it’s business suicide, especially with the amount of student debt dentists are faced with.  She is a mom to two young boys, ages 2 and 3, and hopes to inspire more women to take the leap into practice ownership!   www.smileandcompany.com