From Fortune. ©2022 Fortune Media IP Limited. All rights reserved. Used under license.   At a time when employee retention issues are common conversations on social media and in boardrooms, employers are looking for more and more ways to combat turnover and attract top candidates.   While no company is immune to cultural shifts, Ultradent has been able to create an invaluable culture and quality employee experience. This is evidenced by Fortune Magazine honoring Ultradent as the fifth Best Large Workplace in Manufacturing and Production for 2022.

When discussing our core values Dr. Dan Fischer, founder of Ultradent Products Inc., often says “Honesty plus courage equals integrity.” It’s interesting to see how that value equation has played out over the years in everything, from the way Ultradent advertises its products to research and development.

What's the best thing you bought on Black Friday?

  ​Recently, Ultradent added two new vice presidents to its executive team—Dr. Jaleena Jessop as VP of Clinical Affairs, and Karen Phillips as VP of Sales and Marketing. Both women bring a rich background and breadth of experience to their new roles and are proven, outstanding leaders in their field of expertise. Today you'll have the chance to learn about both women's impressive professional backgrounds, and also a bit more about their dynamic personalities—their favorite movies, their favorite Ultradent products, and more! 

In honor of International Women's Day, we sat down with Jaleena Jessop, Ultradent's Director of Clinical Affairs. She is also a practicing dentist. In our conversation, she discusses how, through hard work and determination, she achieved her goal of becoming a dentist despite coming from a very conservative background where women weren't encouraged to pursue careers. 

​I have so many memories surrounding the holidays, like seeing kids pile out of the car after driving from another part of the country to come back home and reconnect with those they love for a few days or a week or two. It's so special.

The holidays are always special. What better way to kick them off than with an attitude of gratitude? Here are a few things that some of us here at Ultradent are grateful for:

What do you do at Ultradent? I’m a chemist in Research and Development. I started in Quality Control, but I wanted more hands-on experience with the products and having a hand in creating new products, so I moved over to R&D and I love it.  How many years have you worked at Ultradent? Just over three years. 

If you could choose anything, aside from being a dentist, what would you do as a profession? When I was a young boy, I often thought about hydraulic engineering, because that was the cutting edge of engineering at the time. I’m still fascinated by hydraulics. There are so many wonderful developments that have occurred just in my lifetime in that realm—through World War II and the hydraulics used in the war efforts, to hydraulics used in excavating. We even use hydraulics to a lesser degree at Ultradent, which brought about the trademark syringe delivery method that Ultradent has become known for.