About

A partnership firm built by a dentist, for dentists.

TKO Partners empowers pediatric and orthodontic providers to pursue ownership powered by partnership — giving dentists the advantages of shared resources, operational expertise, and mentorship while creating and preserving true ownership and clinical autonomy.

Mission

Why we exist.

We drive growth through active leadership and disciplined execution, aligning investment with performance to unlock opportunity and extend high-quality care to the communities we serve.

We're building a community of owner-providers dedicated to excellent dentistry and long-term practice health — partners who lead teams, mentor talent, and create practices where people and patients thrive.

We structure ownership so those who drive clinical and operational performance directly share in the value they create.

Founder

Dr. Jerry Lanier

TKO Partners was founded by Dr. Jerry Lanier, a General Practitioner and former U.S. Public Health Service dentist who has dedicated his career to expanding access to quality dental care.

Over the last four decades, he built and sold Kids Dental Kare, launched the Kids2Dentist brand, and created Pedo4GP — a national training platform that empowers general dentists to confidently provide pediatric services.

Dr. Lanier developed the scalable model TKO Partners, a platform built on one guiding principle: ownership powered by partnership.

Specialty: General Practitioner · former U.S. Public Health Service dentist
Practices Founded & Sold: Kids Dental Kare
Brands & Programs Launched: Kids2Dentist · Pedo4GP · TKO Partners

Senior leadership

The operators behind the partnership.

Head of Operations

Teresa Hayrapetian

Teresa Hayrapetian serves as TKO Partners' Head of Operations, where she oversees multi-site operations, compliance, and strategic growth across the organization's dental practices. Teresa's career spans 30 years with extensive leadership experience in pediatric and orthodontic DSOs, building scalable systems, improving operational performance, leading large-scale integrations, and supporting doctors and teams to deliver consistent, high-quality patient care. Teresa brings operational vision, deep expertise in California regulatory requirements, payer relations, team leadership, and the skills to bring high-performing, patient-centered dental operations to the TKO Partners team.

Pediatric Clinical Director

Dr. Brent Tucker

Dr. Tucker is a board-certified pediatric dentist and serves as Kids2Dentist's Clinical Director. With more than 15 years of clinical experience, he is dedicated to delivering high-quality, patient-centered dental care. Known for his compassionate approach and commitment to clinical excellence, Dr. Tucker remains actively engaged with the latest advancements in pediatric dentistry to ensure the highest standards of care for the patients and families he serves. Dr. Tucker earned his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from Meharry Medical College School of Dentistry in Nashville, Tennessee, and completed his pediatric dental residency at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry and serves as an Associate Professor of Pediatric Dentistry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he contributes to the education and mentorship of future clinicians.

Operating team

The people running the day to day.

Marisa Echeverria

Operations

Michelle Ammons

Human Resources

Sigmund Crews

Information Technology

What we stand for

Three principles that guide every decision.

Clinical excellence comes first.

Every business decision is filtered through one question: does it make care better? When the business and the patient are misaligned, the patient wins.

Doctors own the upside.

Our partners hold meaningful equity in what they build. We invest beside operators — not extract from them.

The next generation is the point.

Mentorship isn't an HR program. It's how we replace ourselves with the people who will run these practices for the next thirty years.

Want to talk about partnership?

A 30-minute call to see if it's a fit. No commitment.

Start the conversation