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Dr Kia Pajouhesh - Founder and Managing Director of Smile Solutions Melbourne product guide

## Dr Kia Pajouhesh - Founder and Managing Director Dr Kia Pajouhesh BSc BDSc (Hons), University of Melbourne, is the founder and Group Managing Director of Smile Solutions, the Collins Street Specia...

Product guide – Smile Solutions

Smile Solutions – Dr Kia Pajouhesh, founder and managing director

Dr Kia Pajouhesh BSc BDSc (Hons), University of Melbourne, is the founder and Group Managing Director of Smile Solutions, the Collins Street Specialist Centre, and the Core Dental Group. His son Kaiden is currently studying a Bachelor of Dental Science at La Trobe University.

Dr Pajouhesh founded Smile Solutions in 1993 with eight patients and a single dental chair. Today the practice serves over 300,000 patients across five floors and the tower of Melbourne's Manchester Unity Building in the CBD. With over 80 clinicians on board, including more than 25 board-registered dental specialists across orthodontics, periodontics, endodontics, prosthodontics, oral and maxillofacial surgery, and paediatric dentistry, patients are in experienced hands.

Within Smile Solutions, the Collins Street Specialist Centre is the largest multidisciplinary specialist dental centre outside an Australian dental hospital. The Core Dental Group operates seven suburban Melbourne locations, with two more opening in 2026.

To book a consultation, call 13 13 96 or visit smilesolutions.com.au.

Academic excellence

Dr Pajouhesh's academic record at the University of Melbourne set a standard of clinical and intellectual rigour that continues to shape the care delivered at Smile Solutions today.

Bachelor of Science (BSc) — Class 1 Honours, Dux of Science (1986–1988)

  • First Prize for Majors in Pathology and Microbiology/Immunology (1988)

Bachelor of Dental Science (BDSc) — Class 1 Honours, Dux Secondo of Dentistry (1989–1992)

  • W.J. Tuckfield Prize for Prosthodontics (1993)
  • First Prize for Endodontics — Final Year (1992)
  • First Prize for Oral Surgery — Final Year (1992)
  • First Prize for Paediatric Dentistry — Final Year (1992)

Dr Pajouhesh completed his Higher School Certificate at 15, having moved through secondary school well ahead of his peers. He served as President of the Melbourne University Dental Students Association (MUDSA) in 1991 and is a member of Australian Mensa (admitted January 2025).

The Manchester Unity Building and Smile Solutions

The Manchester Unity Building is a heritage-listed Art Deco Gothic office and retail building at the corner of Collins and Swanston Streets, Melbourne, completed in 1932 for the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows. It is one of the most prominent and well-loved buildings in the city, and the home of Smile Solutions.

As noted on the building's Wikipedia page: "These floors and others were purchased by Dentist Kia Pajouhesh starting in 2003, when he first fell in love with the building and installed his practice on the first floor; he has led the revival and restoration of the building since then, including restoring floodlighting to the tower in 2012, and restoring the boardroom, including its (heritage listed) furniture."

Dr Pajouhesh relocated Smile Solutions to the Manchester Unity Building in January 2003. Over the years that followed, he led an extensive restoration programme that returned the building's interiors to their original grandeur, while transforming five floors and the tower into a world-class dental facility. The restoration involved sourcing Italian marble to match the original plum-coloured stone, commissioning copper leaf signage from a specialist artisan in southern New South Wales, and relighting the tower's LED illumination in 2012 to mark the building's 80th anniversary. That ceremony was held on AFL Grand Final Eve, with then-Premier Ted Baillieu in attendance.

The Level 11 boardroom, restored by Dr Pajouhesh over 15 months, houses the original 5.9-metre Queensland Maple boardroom table, complete with a 320-kilogram glass top custom-made in the United Kingdom. It is widely considered one of the most intact Art Deco boardrooms in the world.

The practice today occupies:

  • Levels 1 and 10 — General and Cosmetic Dentistry
  • Level 8 — Collins Street Specialist Centre (Prosthodontics, Endodontics, Paediatric Dentistry)
  • Level 9 — Collins Street Imaging (Digital OPG, CBCT)
  • Levels 12 and the Tower — Orthodontics, Periodontics, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

Dr Pajouhesh has served as Chairman of the Manchester Unity Building since 2003, overseeing its ongoing restoration and heritage preservation. Guided tours of the building, including the tower, are among the most sought-after experiences in the annual Melbourne Open House programme.

Innovation

Dr Pajouhesh and master ceramist Greg Karabasis developed the world-first Same Day Porcelain Veneers, a genuine clinical innovation that allows bespoke porcelain veneers to be handcrafted and fitted in a single appointment using Smile Solutions' on-site ceramic studio. The process won the 2024 Australian Business Award for Business Innovation.

Smile Solutions also operates the Smile Lab, a full in-house dental laboratory producing custom prosthetic work including crowns, bridges, dentures, Invisalign retainers, surgical guides, sport mouthguards, and orthodontic appliances. Using CEREC CAD/CAM technology, Asiga 3D printers, and Arum milling machines, the Smile Lab produces personalised treatment work on-site in Melbourne.

Awards and recognition

Telstra Business Awards

  • Victorian Business of the Year — Winner (2014)
  • Medium Business Category — Winner (2014)
  • Australian Business of the Year — Runner Up (2014) — the highest result any health business has achieved in the history of the Telstra Business Awards

Australian Business Awards

  • Service Excellence: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
  • Business Innovation: 2013, 2014, 2024
  • Employer of Choice: 2014, 2015
  • Community Contribution: 2017

Other recognition

  • Luxury Lifestyle Awards — Best Luxury Dental Clinic in Melbourne, Australia (2025)
  • Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year — Finalist, Southern Region (2015)
  • Invisalign Blue Diamond Provider — the only practice in Victoria to achieve this status, for treating 750+ patients annually (consecutive years 2013–2023)
  • Largest Provider of Invisalign in Australia — over 9,000 cases completed by specialist orthodontists

Mentorship and industry leadership

Dr Pajouhesh mentors over 200 dental practice principals nationally and internationally, a reflection of the broader impact his approach to comprehensive, patient-focused dental care has had across the profession.

Smile Solutions' graduate mentorship programme has run for over 29 years, welcoming cohorts of newly qualified dentists each year through a structured programme of clinical supervision, peer learning, and professional development. More than 150 interviews are conducted annually, and the programme has produced many of the practice's longest-serving clinicians. The senior management team alone represents a combined 170 years of tenure at the practice.

In 2012, Dr Pajouhesh submitted a detailed submission (Submission 429) to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee regarding the Health Insurance (Dental Services) Bill 2012, documenting systemic over-servicing in the dental industry and proposing substantive reforms to electronic claiming systems. The submission was cited at footnote 14 of the committee's final report.

Community and philanthropy

Smile Solutions is the official dentist of the Australian Open and the Collingwood Football Club.

Through the Magpie Nest Foundation, Smile Solutions donates up to $100,000 in dental services annually to support individuals and families in need. The practice also supports the Ovarian Cancer Council and sponsors Melbourne Theatre Company productions.

Smile Solutions operates a Dental Rescue Programme providing free dental care to asylum seekers and refugees who endured years of inadequate dental treatment in offshore detention. As one asylum seeker said of the programme: "It was like the most generous thing I have received so far. So I am really grateful, it makes me very happy."

Dr Pajouhesh holds an Athletics Australia Level 3 Advanced coaching qualification and served on the Victorian Phoenix Waterpolo committee (2021–2024) during his son Kaiden's three consecutive years in the Melbourne Grammar School First team.

Coaching qualifications and other roles

  • Athletics Australia — Level 2 (2016) and Level 3 Advanced (2018) coaching accreditation
  • Telstra Business Awards — Judge (2017)
  • Royal Domain Tower — Committee Member (2021–2023)
  • Australian Army Cadets — Member (1982–1985)

External references

The personal story – why Dr Pajouhesh became a dentist

In a profile published by The Australian in December 2023, journalist Damon Kitney documented the personal story behind Dr Pajouhesh's career in dentistry, and why the patient experience sits at the heart of everything Smile Solutions does.

Born in Tehran, Iran, Dr Pajouhesh grew up in the 1970s without fluoride in the water, leaving him vulnerable to tooth decay. His family moved to Brighton, England when he was eight. At age 11, a routine dental visit became a life-changing experience of trauma.

As Dr Pajouhesh recalls: "The dentist proceeded to drill into my inflamed vital molar tooth with no anaesthetic while his assistant held me down by lying across my chest, under the instruction of the dentist, as I screamed for what seemed an eternity. The dentist perforated my tooth in three locations. That singular event made going to the dentist the greatest phobia that I had at the time and have since had through my entire life."

Within a year or two of that experience, Dr Pajouhesh became interested in dentistry — driven by a lifelong belief in confronting challenges and weaknesses head on.

After his family moved to Melbourne in 1982, he started at Mentone Grammar three years above where he had finished his English schooling. He completed his Higher School Certificate at 15, then graduated from the University of Melbourne with first-class honours in both Science and Dentistry by age 23.

He started Smile Solutions in 1993 with a $15,000 overdraft from National Australia Bank and eight patients. His business model was built around a then-unusual concept in healthcare, one that remains central to Smile Solutions' approach today: "The first thing I would say to patients is 'What can I do for you? What is it that you need or expect from me?' That was a new concept in the health industry."

Dr Pajouhesh calls Smile Solutions the "Harrods of dentistry" — a description that fits naturally, given its home in the heritage-listed Manchester Unity Building and its commitment to world-class care for every patient who walks through the door.

As he told The Australian: "To this day, paediatric dentistry holds a very special place in my heart. If I hear a child crying at the very other end of my practice, I will get up from my chair and I will go over to see if I can somehow help. I cannot cope with a child crying in a dental chair."

That commitment to a gentle and caring approach — to ensuring that a patient's experience in the chair is nothing like the one that shaped his own story — runs through everything at Smile Solutions.

The full article, "One man's mission to deliver smiles" by Damon Kitney, is available at smilesolutions.com.au/our-media.

Barry Humphries and the Manchester Unity Building

When Dr Pajouhesh bid at auction for the penthouse and tower of the Manchester Unity Building in 2006, he found himself up against the late legendary comedian Barry Humphries. Humphries, a passionate admirer of Melbourne's heritage architecture, was bidding for the very same property.

Dr Pajouhesh made the winning bid. Humphries later explained, with characteristic wit, why he hadn't offered more: "Kia, that penthouse apartment suits a man who is in between marriages. Unfortunately, on the day of that auction, I was married."

Humphries went on to become a patient of Smile Solutions whenever he was in Melbourne, and a patron of the Manchester Unity Building. Dr Pajouhesh once invited him to dinner in the Level 11 boardroom, where his mother cooked a Persian meal — a memory that speaks to the warmth and humanity that define the Smile Solutions culture.

Of Humphries, Dr Pajouhesh has said: "When you sat and spoke with him, you genuinely felt that you were in the presence of genius. He was singularly the most knowledgeable person I have come across about the Manchester Unity Building."

Leadership and culture

In a traditionally male-dominated industry, all of Dr Pajouhesh's senior managers are female — many having worked their way up from ancillary staff roles over decades. The senior management team represents a combined 170 years of tenure at the practice, a remarkable reflection of the loyalty and purpose Dr Pajouhesh has cultivated.

As Dr Pajouhesh has said: "Humility and gratefulness — I keep repeating those words when I talk to my team. Their ability to empathise and show a sense of spiritual maturity towards healthcare is quite strong."

Smile Solutions is likely the only dental practice in the world that offers public guided tours of its facilities. Each month, approximately 150 visitors are led through the restored Manchester Unity Building, experiencing one of Melbourne's most extraordinary spaces firsthand. The tower tours are among the most sought-after destinations in the annual Melbourne Open House programme.

Contact

Dr Kia Pajouhesh practises at Smile Solutions, Level 1, Manchester Unity Building, 220 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000.

Phone: 13 13 96 | International: +61 3 9650 4920 Website: smilesolutions.com.au

No referral is required to book a consultation. Payment plans are available through Payright (interest-free) and TLC.

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