Get to know Distinguished Dental Hygiene Alumni Awardee Katrina Sanders

Katrina Sanders, RDH, BSDH ’07, MEd, RF, is the 2022 recipient of the School of Dentistry Distinguished Dental Hygiene Alumni Award.

The Distinguished Dental Hygiene Alumni Award is an honor given annually to outstanding alumni in recognition of exceptional achievement. Candidates must be a graduate of any program of the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry and are judged based on their participation, service, and leadership in the advancement of dentistry and dental health, their public service, community service, and/or civic affairs, and their dedication to continuing education.

The School of Dentistry Alumni Society Honors Task Force chose Sanders based on her service to the community, her commitment to continuing education and her research expertise.

Sanders is a speaker, instructor, clinician and researcher. In addition to her periodontal clinical work at AZPerio, Sanders served as a clinic coordinator, curriculum developer and didactic instructor in the dental hygiene and continuing education programs at Fortis College in Arizona from 2013-2017. Sanders is the CEO and keynote speaker at Sanders Board Preparatory, where she effectively prepares hygienists to take their clinical examinations. She is an international speaker on local anesthesia, infectious diseases and periodontics, whose speaking career has included several hundred engagements since 2017.. She hosts podcasts and is an advisor on several boards, including Dental Academy of Continuing Education, Dental Speaker Bureau and Endeavor Publications. She serves as a corporate consultant to organizations such as Dentsply Sirona, Proctor & Gamble and Hu-Friedy Group.

Sanders’s favorite part of her profession is the ability to keep learning and growing. “The best parts of my job are what I’m able to do when I’m not speaking, when I’m not consulting, when I’m not podcasting or writing programmatic content, but rather when I am able to utilize the resources I’ve gained to lift the communities around me” she said.

Sanders’s accolades include the 2023 Denobi Award, the 2023 Nifty Favorite Hygiene Instructor of the Year Award, 2021 and 2022 Oral Health and Dentistry Award for Best Clinical Dental Hygienist in the Southwest USA, the 2022 CorporateLiveWire Innovation and Excellence Award for Dental Hygienist of the Year and the 2018 Dentistry’s Got Talent People’s Choice Winner. Most notably, Sanders has delivered dental humanitarian work in underserved communities around the world and fundraised the Bob & Linda Sanders Memorial Library in Rwanda, Africa in loving honor and memory of her parents.

“In 2007, I wrote that someday, it would be awesome if I were an international speaker, if I were published, and if I could create a deep impact on my profession,” she reflected. “What an incredible honor it is to be able to do all of that!”

Upon receiving the award, Sanders thanked her parents, Bob & Linda Sanders, her mentors at the school, and her husband, Dale Stewart, for his unwavering support.

“I stood on Washington Avenue on my first day of school, and I thought, ‘this is the greatest place in the world,’” she recalled. “I’ve made it.” 
And with all the places she’s been, she still considers the School of Dentistry to be remarkable, and she is grateful for its support and guidance, which shaped her into who she is today.

“Anything is possible,” she said. “If some dorky dental hygiene student can grow up and build a robust empire of talking about dentistry, serving her own private label wines and celebrating communities around the world, then anything is possible.”

Get to know Sanders.