I didn’t fit the mould. So I made my own.

By Nikita Mehta | International Women’s Day Feature

I want to start with something I don’t say out loud very often: for a long time, I genuinely thought I’d got it all wrong.

Wrong field. Wrong timing. Wrong personality for the career I’d chosen. I’m not a natural networker. I didn’t get the hospital position that would’ve set me on the ‘right’ path in the UK. I hated NHS dentistry — not the patients, never the patients — but the system, the pace, the feeling that doing things properly wasn’t really the point. I knew I loved dentistry. I knew I cared about aesthetics and doing things well. But knowing what you love and knowing what to do with it are two very different things.

In 2005, I took a risk that most people around me thought was odd at best, reckless at worst: I enrolled in a two-year aesthetic dentistry programme at UCLA. Barely any dentists in the UK were doing this. There was no cohort to belong to, no one to reassure me it would work out. I just knew I needed a boost — a real one — and I wasn’t going to get it by staying put.

The long, quiet middle bit

I came back from UCLA in 2007 qualified, excited, and absolutely riddled with impostor syndrome. I joined a very prestigious, very private practice and I kept my head down. I worked hard. I got better. But I didn’t shout about it, didn’t build a profile, didn’t do the things you’re apparently supposed to do. Partly that’s just not who I am — but partly I kept waiting to feel ready, and ready never quite came.

Those years were also harder personally than I’ve ever really talked about. Getting pregnant wasn’t straightforward for me. It took years longer than I’d hoped, and I think the delay and the worry fed the procrastination. I kept putting off building my own thing — telling myself I’d do it when things settled, when I felt more confident, when the time was right. The time was never right.

I finally got pregnant at 40. And honestly? My first reaction wasn’t just joy. It was panic. I was terrified of losing ground at work, of being seen differently, of all the momentum I’d quietly built just slipping away.

Something clicked

Then I got pregnant again at 41, with my son. And something shifted that I still find hard to explain. The fear kind of… fell away. Like, what exactly was I protecting? What was I waiting for? I had two children, a set of skills I’d spent years building, and a very clear vision of the kind of practice I’d always wanted to work in. Why was I not just building it?

So I did. I opened my own practice — in a space next to a museum and a park, which isn’t where most people would choose, and I loved it for exactly that reason. I’ve always cared about design, about how things look and feel, and I wanted the practice to reflect that from the very beginning. The logo, the interior, the whole experience of walking through the door — all of it mattered to me.

Year one: Best Design and Logo. Year two: Highly Commended, New Practice. In one of the most competitive areas around. I’m not telling you that to brag — I’m telling you because I spent a decade doubting whether I had what it took, and I needed to hear that the answer was yes.

What the practice is actually built on

Good dentistry, obviously. But beyond that — transparency. I tell patients the truth about what they need, what it costs, what’s realistic. And I’ve tried really hard to build a team where the women I work with feel supported, not just managed. I know what it’s like to be in an environment where your ambition is tolerated rather than encouraged. I didn’t want to recreate that.

It’s still a work in progress. Running a private practice in a competitive area, while being a mum to two young kids, is not a smooth operation. Some days it absolutely is not. But it’s mine, and that changes everything.

If any of this sounds familiar

Maybe you’re at a point where the path you’re on doesn’t feel like yours. Maybe you didn’t get the position, or the training place, or the thing you were supposed to want. Maybe you’re not a networker either, and you’re not sure how to get anywhere without being one. Maybe you’ve spent years doing good work quietly, and wondering if quietly is ever going to be enough.

I don’t have a tidy formula for any of it. What I do know is that not fitting in — into a system, a culture, a prescribed route — can actually be useful information. It’s uncomfortable, but it points you somewhere. And sometimes the detour is the whole point.

I became a mother at 40 and 41. I opened a practice in my 40s. I built something I’m proud of later than I’d planned, in a way I hadn’t expected, in a place no one would’ve predicted. None of that disqualifies it. If anything, the timing made me more certain about what I actually wanted.

You don’t have to have it figured out by a certain age. You just have to eventually stop waiting and start.

— Nikita