LEA E. NESBIT is the CEO of Natural Dental Implants (NDI), Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Natural Dental Implants AG, a dental technology and services company headquartered in Berlin, Germany that has developed a new, patented system for replacing teeth that are no longer functional; the Replicate™ Non-surgical Tooth Replacement System.
Prior to NDI, Lea co-founded Lingualcare, Inc., a Dallas, Texas based dental technology company that developed and marketed disruptive technology for the mass customization of invisible, orthodontic braces with operations in the U.S., Germany and Mexico. Lingualcare won the prestigious Dallas 100 Entrepreneur Award in 2007 for being one of the fastest growing, most dynamic companies in Dallas. Lingualcare was purchased by 3M Company in November, 2007. Lea served as Lingualcare’s CEO from the company’s inception in January, 2003 until the sale to 3M, and as president of the division and a member of the 3M Unitek Management Operating Committee until April, 2010.
Prior to Lingualcare, Lea spent three years with OraMetrix, a healthcare technology company that developed platform technologies for dental imaging, orthodontic treatment planning and mass customization of orthodontic archwires. At OraMetrix Lea served as vice president of marketing and sales. Prior to OraMetrix, Lea served as vice president of marketing at AutoTester, a QA software and professional services company. Ms. Nesbit was director of marketing at XTRA On-Line Corporation, a start-up, Internet travel software-development company backed by Austin Ventures. Lea held management positions in international sales and product marketing at Micrografx, a developer of Windows graphics applications, where she was the managing director for Latin America, Africa, India and the Middle East. She started her career at GeoWorks in Berkeley, California working as a product manager.
Lea holds a B.A. in Political Science (Cum Laude) from the University of Texas El Paso and an M.B.A. from Thunderbird, School of Global Management in Glendale, AZ.
Lea is currently a member of Entrepreneurs for North Texas, on the board of TeXchange, a non-profit organization dedicated to making technology entrepreneurs successful, and serves as an advisor and mentor to several start-up companies. She frequently speaks at start-up technology and healthcare forums and is a guest lecturer at SMU’s Cox School of Business, University of Texas Dallas and Dallas public schools.
