We recently connected with Thomas Fitzpatrick and have shared our conversation below.

Thomas, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

The idea for Cura Smiles began in 2003, when I volunteered at a rural dental clinic in Nicaragua. While treating patients in remote communities, I witnessed firsthand the pain, isolation, and health complications caused by lack of access to dental care. Year after year, I returned to serve and eventually helped establish a permanent clinic for local coffee-farming families. But even as that effort grew, I realized the same urgent need existed back home in San Diego, especially among underserved communities facing barriers to care.

In 2017, I opened Cura Smiles in the heart of City Heights with a simple but powerful mission: to provide free, compassionate dental care to those who need it most. From the beginning, Cura Smiles focused on restoring not just oral health, but also confidence, dignity, and overall well-being. The clinic serves individuals experiencing homelessness, low-income families, and people in recovery, offering a unique approach that blends high-quality care with education and community support. In 2024 alone, Cura Smiles provided $415,000 worth of services to 247 patients and delivered 110 dentures—all at no cost.

What makes Cura Smiles special is its belief that everyone deserves access to a healthy smile. The organization empowers people with both treatment and knowledge, addressing the deeper social and systemic issues tied to poor oral health. For many patients, a visit to Cura Smiles is the beginning of a new chapter. That transformation is what drives the mission forward and why the clinic continues to grow through the support of donors, volunteers, and a shared commitment to building a healthier, more equitable future.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Cura Smiles is a nonprofit dental clinic based in City Heights, San Diego, with a mission to provide free, high-quality dental care to individuals and families who lack access to essential oral health services.

Cura Smiles offers compassionate and comprehensive dental services entirely free of charge, focusing on people experiencing homelessness, low-income families, and individuals in recovery. In addition to general dentistry and restorative care, the clinic provides dentures, education on preventative care, and ongoing support to empower patients long-term. In 2024, Cura Smiles delivered over $400,000 worth of services to nearly 250 patients, including 110 full denture sets—restoring not just smiles, but confidence and dignity. What sets Cura Smiles apart is its belief that oral health is a human right and a foundation for overall well-being. We are most proud of the lives we’ve helped transform by removing the barriers of cost, fear, and stigma. Cura Smiles is a community effort driven by volunteers, sustained by donors, and rooted in the idea that everyone deserves to live pain-free, with a smile they’re proud to share. We would want our potential clients and followers to know that we exist entirely based on donor giving and grants. We can’t do what we do without the community’s support, and we are so thankful for our existing donors while simultaneously hoping to grow our donor-base so we can serve even more patients.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

One of the most defining moments in my journey came during my early volunteer trips to Nicaragua. I was treating patients in rural communities where people had lived for years with untreated infections, missing teeth, and daily pain—conditions that were entirely preventable with access to basic dental care. Each year I returned, I saw the same problems persist, not because people didn’t care about their health, but because there were simply no resources available to help them. It was heartbreaking and frustrating, but it fueled my determination to make a lasting impact. I worked with local leaders to continue to find ways to support these families in need.

That same sense of urgency followed me back to San Diego, where I realized similar struggles existed in my own community. In neighborhoods like City Heights, far too many people were silently suffering from poor oral health, unable to afford treatment or navigate a system that often overlooked them. There wasn’t nearly enough support in place, and that gap weighed heavily on me. Instead of turning away from the problem, I chose to act. Founding Cura Smiles in 2017 was an act of resilience, a response to years of witnessing preventable suffering, both abroad and at home. It was built on the belief that access to care shouldn’t depend on income, geography, or circumstance, and that every person deserves to smile without pain or shame.

Have you ever had to pivot?

A major pivot in my journey came when I realized that providing dental care alone wasn’t enough, it needed to be sustainable. After nearly a decade of volunteering in rural Nicaragua, including helping build a permanent dental clinic in Boaco for a community of coffee growers, I began to see the limitations of short-term trips. The need was constant, but resources were limited. In response, I shifted from being solely a provider of care to building a model that could generate ongoing support. That’s when, in 2013, the concept for Cura Coffee was born—a social enterprise that would ethically source coffee from the same communities I was serving and use the proceeds to fund long-term dental care efforts.

This pivot not only strengthened the work in Nicaragua, but it also laid the foundation for Cura Smiles, the nonprofit dental clinic I opened in San Diego in 2017. By combining ethical business practices with nonprofit healthcare, I created a unique and sustainable model that supports underserved communities both locally and globally. It was a bold shift that allowed me to expand my impact far beyond what one could do with a dental license alone.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.curasmiles.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/curasmiles/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CuraSmiles/

Image Credits

Cura Smiles