Today we’d like to introduce you to Don Dexter.
Hi Don, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story has taken a few turns I never could have predicted.
I grew up in rural Oregon, a Modoc Indian boy from Beatty, and eventually found my way into dentistry. I practiced general dentistry for 25 years and built a career and a life around it. I assumed that was probably the road I would stay on.
Then, in 2022, everything changed. A significant health event brought my clinical career in general dentistry to an abrupt end. I sold my practice at the end of that year and suddenly found myself facing a question I hadn’t really planned on asking: What do you do when the thing you’ve spent most of your adult life building is no longer available to you?
For me, the answer turned out to be: build something else.
In 2023, I opened Eugene Dental Sleep Center, focusing exclusively on dental sleep medicine and helping people with obstructive sleep apnea. At almost the same time, I opened Don Dexter Gallery, a contemporary art gallery that increasingly became centered around Indigenous art, artists, and storytelling.
At first, those two businesses probably looked completely unrelated. One was healthcare and the other was art. Over time, however, I realized they were expressions of the same thing: creating spaces where people can be seen, where relationships matter, and where something meaningful can happen.
The gallery led to opportunities I never anticipated—curating contemporary Indigenous art at the Hult Center, creating Indigenous Movie Night, working with Indigenous artists and filmmakers, and developing community programs that bring Indigenous stories into some of Eugene’s most visible civic and cultural spaces. The dental sleep practice has grown alongside it, giving me another way to think about wellness, education, and service.
I don’t think of what happened in 2022 as starting over anymore. It was more of a pivot. I carried forward everything I had learned from dentistry, business, failure, culture, relationships, and life and simply began applying it differently.
Today I get to work at the intersection of healthcare, art, culture, and community. It’s certainly not the path I planned, but looking back, there is a thread connecting all of it.
I think I’m still following that thread.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, not even close. But I’m not sure a smooth road would have gotten me here.
Like most people, I’ve had my share of loss, setbacks, bad decisions, and things that simply didn’t work out the way I thought they would. The biggest professional disruption came in 2022, when a health event abruptly ended my ability to practice general dentistry after 25 years. I had built much of my identity around being a dentist, and suddenly I had to figure out who I was without the thing I had spent most of my adult life doing.
That was difficult, but it also forced me to look at what remained.
I still had my experience. I still knew how to build something. I still had curiosity, relationships, and a desire to do meaningful work. And maybe most importantly, I had reached a point in my life where I was less interested in trying to become what other people expected me to be.
Starting Eugene Dental Sleep Center and Don Dexter Gallery at essentially the same time wasn’t exactly the safe response to losing a career. Both were startups, both required significant risk, and neither came with a roadmap. There have been plenty of moments when I wondered whether either one was going to work.
There have also been challenges in reconnecting more intentionally with my Indigenous identity and deciding what that means in my work. I’ve learned that belonging is complicated. You can spend a lot of energy waiting for someone else to validate your place in a community, a profession, or a room. At some point, I stopped waiting.
One of the biggest lessons for me has been that you don’t necessarily overcome every struggle. Sometimes you adapt to it. Sometimes you carry it with you. And sometimes the thing that closes one road is exactly what makes you finally notice another one.
So no, it hasn’t been a smooth road. But I wouldn’t trade the road I traveled for a smoother one, because it brought me to a life that feels much more intentional than the one I originally planned.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
My professional life today is probably a little difficult to put into a traditional category.
I own Eugene Dental Sleep Center, a practice devoted exclusively to dental sleep medicine and the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea, and Don Dexter Gallery, a contemporary art gallery located within the same space. On paper, dentistry and art may seem like an unusual combination. For me, they make perfect sense.
Eugene Dental Sleep Center grew out of my 25 years in dentistry and my desire to continue working in healthcare in a way that could make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Sleep affects nearly everything—our physical health, mental health, relationships, work, and quality of life. Our practice focuses on helping people understand sleep-disordered breathing and, when appropriate, treating sleep apnea with oral appliance therapy.
Don Dexter Gallery began more personally. Art had always been important to me, but the gallery became a way to create the kind of space I wanted to see in Eugene—contemporary, welcoming, and increasingly grounded in Indigenous art and storytelling. That work has grown beyond the walls of the gallery into curating exhibitions, Indigenous Movie Night at the Hult Center, and collaborations with artists, filmmakers, cultural organizations, and the broader community.
What has surprised me is how naturally the two sides have grown together. Both are ultimately about wellness, connection, and creating space for people. One happens through healthcare; the other happens through art and culture.
I don’t really separate them anymore.
I sometimes joke that I built an art gallery with a dental sleep practice in the back—or maybe it’s a dental sleep practice with an art gallery in the front. Either way, it works.
More importantly, it allows me to spend my professional life doing things I genuinely care about. At this stage of my career, that’s probably the best definition of success I have.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Two books have been particularly pivotal for me: Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta and From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks.
Sand Talk helped me better understand and articulate something I think I already knew intuitively—that knowledge, relationships, place, culture, and community aren’t separate things. They are interconnected. It influenced the way I think about my Indigenous identity, but also the way I approach art, business, healthcare, and community work. It gave me language for a way of seeing the world that felt familiar.
From Strength to Strength came into my life at exactly the right time. After spending 25 years building a career in dentistry and then unexpectedly having to leave that career behind, the book helped me think differently about what comes next. Instead of trying to recreate what I had lost, I began asking what I could build with everything I had learned.
Together, those books reinforced something that has become increasingly important to me: life doesn’t have to be a straight line. We can carry our experience forward without being defined by what we used to do.
I still read widely, listen, learn, and stay curious, but those are two books I find myself returning to because they helped change the way I understand where I’ve been—and where I might go next.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://eugenedentalsleep.com/
