Latina Dentist Finds Success Helping Her Community
BY ANGIE HERNANDEZ QUEENS
PUBLISHED 7:49 PM ET JUN. 04, 2023
Clara Vanegas arrived at We Smile Dental in Astoria for her routine checkup.
She has been a patient for 30 years of the dentist and founder of the practice, Dr. Maritza Núñez, whom she says she trusts because she speaks her language. “Speaking your own language, expressing how you feel, and asking the doctor for what you want is very important as a patient,” says Dr. Núñez.
Patient Clara Vanegas adds: “I’m very proud to know that people, my people, are making progress.”
It is progress that has been cultivated over forty years. Dr. Núñez came with her husband and eldest son to Queens from Ecuador, where she had studied dentistry.
“We faced many hardships, many obstacles. I thought it was going to be easy, but it wasn’t,” she recalls.
It wasn’t easy for her career either. She studied at New York University and Queens College for seven years to validate her dental degree in the United States. But then came the big question:
“What are we going to do? We started from scratch with my husband,” Núñez remembers.
They opened their first dental office as a small business on the first floor of their home in Jackson Heights.
“We were in Jackson Heights. People looked for us because we were the Núñez family. And then we grew, we grew, and we kept growing,” says the founder of We Smile Dental.
Today, they run three dental offices, where they remain true to their mission of care and prevention.
