Business Leader of the Year!!
As you’ve probably seen by now that our beloved Lisa McKinnon recently won Business Leader of the Year at the 2025 Dental Industry Awards (*whoop whoop*). Now that the celebrations have died down, we wanted to give you a little more insight into what helped Lisa gain national recognition for her hard work here at TD.
This year’s criteria for Business Leader of the Year
This year, the criteria for Business Leader of the Year was:
‘A senior leader who has nurtured a team or company that is performing beyond the sum of its parts. Sustained excellent performance of an organisation (or for a successful turnaround) or just an extraordinary year’s work. This business leader will stand as the clear driver behind a super team effort.’
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting Lisa, you know that her tenacious and positive attitude makes her the perfect candidate for this award!
Playing the Long Game
With 35 years in dentistry, from trainee dental nurse to senior operations leader, Lisa combines rare on-the-ground experience with strategic clarity and brilliant mentoring skills.
Now as COO with responsibility for 34+ practices and 600+ colleagues, the group is stronger, more efficient and more deeply human under her leadership. She is a hands-on leader who builds capability, models accountability and secures measurable results.
Her ability to convert operational complexity into team success, to coach leaders across functions and deliver sustained, people-centred performance are exactly the reasons we felt she was just made for this award! An example of this was where Lisa helped to guide a major transition within some of our practices. It was a complex challenge, but thanks to her steady leadership and the collective effort of everyone involved, it was a huge success.
Beyond this, she’s supported the onboarding of new practices, ran multiple Operations Together Days, strengthened patient plans across the organisation and has been at the forefront of directing our new operational excellence framework.
Awards all-round!
Over and above the day-to-day of her COO responsibilities, one of Lisa’s big projects this year was leading the first ever inaugural TD Awards both for our practices and Resource Hub. The goal of which was to really shine a light and show appreciation to the wonderful people who make TD magic happen day in day out. The awards were a resounding success with 23 different winners, plenty of jubilation and even the occasional waterworks. She has helped set the standard for how we want to give back to our people & the awards will only get bigger and better from here!
People-driven leadership for a people-driven business
Lisa is instrumental in bringing people, projects, processes together ensuring we’re not just ticking a box but making a difference and living our purpose to improve lives and create smiles. We are so unbelievably lucky to have her as one of our leaders and are absolutely thrilled to see her get this recognition at a national level so a huge thank you to the Dentistry Awards judging panel for putting the spotlight on her.