Lasting Impressions | Fall 2016

NSU COLLEGE OF DENTAL MEDICINE © 37 sources of pride is how she received her esteemed position as elected chief of the Department of Dentistry. “My peers here trusted me enough to elect me,” she said, adding that she received 75 percent of the vote. “ ey decided I would be a good leader, and it was an honor for me.” Rolland-Asensi, who is the president and owner of Miami Children’s Smiles in Coral Gables, had privileges through her private practice at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, which meant she had the hospital’s facilities and equipment at her disposal. “Some of our patients may have special needs, which may require more than a traditional o ce setting can o er, so this is when we are in need of the hospital’s pediatric dentistry facilities,” she said. She had been familiar with the hospital a er being its chief resident, while she was doing her general practice residency there. She completed her pediatric dentistry advanced education residency training at the University of Florida (UF). e hospital, then called Miami Children’s Hospital, was renamed Nicklaus Children’s Hospital a er the golf legend, Jack Nicklaus, in 2015. As the elected hospital chief for a four-year term, Rolland-Asensi oversees the operating room for dentists and is instrumental in the credentialing process for incoming dentists who want to be part of the medical sta , as well as for those who want to be given privileges to the pediatric dentistry unit. U.S. SUCCESS According to Rolland-Asensi, the success she has had in South Florida is due in part to the time she spent at NSU’s College of Dental Medicine. Already a dentist when she arrived in the United States in 1993 a er graduating from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, she came here with her husband, Jacobo Asensi. e two lived in Boston, Massachusetts, so he could complete his M.B.A. When her husband was o ered a job in Miami, the couple relocated to South Florida. Still wanting to be involved in dentistry, Rolland-Asensi volunteered at Miami Children’s Hospital in the dental clinic for several months, and then became a resident in the general practice residency from 1997 to 1998. While she always had a desire to work with children, it was only when she arrived in the United States that the reality of becoming a pediatric dentist really took hold. “Pediatric dentistry is a true specialty in the United States,” Gabriela Aurora Rolland-Asensi maintains her own practice and is chief of the dentistry department at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.