Top 25 Women in Dentistry: Diane Johnson-Krueger, President & CEO, NuSmile Pediatric Crowns

Diane Johnson-Krueger is the President and CEO of NuSmile Pediatric Crowns, the largest manufacturer of esthetic pediatric crowns in the country, which introduced its first products in 1991. She is constantly developing new products and improving existing technologies to better serve her clients. NuSmile is currently one of the largest corporate supporters of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry and its foundation, Healthy Smiles, Healthy Children.

“For anyone to be successful, having a passion for what you do is really critical and key,” she said. “Our company’s passion is for what we do, which is to provide esthetic, durable, easy to use, economically priced, prefabricated restorations for children. That passion grew out of a need.”

Early in her career, Johnson-Krueger saw a growing need for these products while working in the dental industry. She had received feedback from doctors about an infectious, chronic disease in children that did not have a good and acceptable restorative outcome.

“Most children with this problem of early childhood caries (ECC), were being restored with stainless steel crowns,” she said. “If the child had a severe case of ECC, the would have 20 teeth and 20 stainless steel crowns, and the doctors were really frustrated with that option.”

So she set out to find a better solution, which she did with NuSmile Pediatric Crowns.

Today, Johnson-Krueger attributes her success to her ability to stay consistent in the focus of her work as well as having the opportunity to get to know most of the leading pediatric dentists both in the U.S. and internationally. She’s inspired by them and has been able to continually learn from them and fulfill their needs based on the dialogue with pediatric professionals.

“I’m able to learn from leading pediatric dentists what they need, what’s important to them, what works, and what doesn’t work,” she said. “Having that relationship is very rewarding and knowing that we’re helping to meet a need. There’s real purpose in what we do.”

Her favorite part of her work is the research and experimentation she is involved in. She knows that work is creating new and better products, which will in turn better the lives of the patients her clients serve. She also enjoys the marketing aspect of her career because it puts her in direct contact with her customers.

“We give back and are able to support those in pediatric dentistry and this it actually something we do because we feel it is important to our customers,” she said. “We fund and support a number of initiatives and awards that we’ve heard are important to pediatric dentists.”

As the president of NuSmile, Johnson-Krueger finds that she wears a lot of different hats, but she says loves the challenges that come with running a growing company. As for the future, she plans to keep growing the business by improving products and coming up with new ones. But at the end of the day, giving dentists the highest quality products so they can deliver health smiles is what drives her to keep going and going.