Dr. Steve Mark Gan didn’t set out to transform the dental industry. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be in it. But a series of bold pivots—from lost commerce student to T-shirt entrepreneur to U.S.-trained oral surgeon—would eventually lead him to found GAOC (Gan Advanced Osseointegration Center), now one of the most recognized premium dental brands in the Philippines.
“I was just an ordinary kid,” Gan says. “I was born in Canada; my parents migrated there. However, they had to return to the Philippines because my grandfather was sick. I grew up in the streets of Binondo at Reina Regente.”
Coming from a family of medical professionals—his grandfather was a respected doctor, his father took over the practice, and his mother was an anesthesiologist—Gan was encouraged early on to follow the same path. But he felt drawn elsewhere. “My parents always encouraged me to go to medicine but I wanted to do business,” he recalls.
He initially enrolled in commerce at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) but found the curriculum uninspiring. “I was so lost. It wasn’t like an entrepreneur school,” he says. “I was taking Philosophy, Filipino subjects in my first year and I said this was all over high school again.”
A conversation with his father sparked a sudden pivot. “While driving me home one day, sabi niya, ‘You want to go to dentistry?’ I immediately said ‘okay’, because I just wanted to ask for a change.”
But even after graduating from dentistry, Gan didn’t go straight into practice. Instead, he jumped into business—specifically, T-shirt manufacturing. “I never thought that I would be practicing dentistry,” he admits. “The culture of dentistry in the Philippines then was not dynamic.”
At its peak, his T-shirt business employed around 70 people. “I would get the clients, I would close the deals, and I was the operations manager from start to finish,” he says. “I was also in charge of collections. My partner was handling the finances.”
Eventually, he found himself juggling two paths. “While doing T-shirt business, I also opened up a clinic… and I would notice I make more money immediately than I have to sell thousands and thousands of T-shirts,” he says. “So, at that time I was at a crossroads.”
His father pushed him to commit. “He said, ‘Go to PGH for your surgery training,’ which I did,” Gan shares. This led him to pursue further training at the University of Southern California and eventually UCLA, where he became a fellow of renowned oral surgeon Dr. Peter K. Moy.
“He taught me everything I needed to know about surgery, oral surgery, dental implants, and about life,” Gan says. “He taught me many principles in life and prepared me for my journey back to the Philippines.”
Returning home with world-class training but little capital, Gan had to start from scratch. “I had no money then. Of course, I didn’t want to burden my parents… I was rushing to make money, so I had to work,” he shares. He took on sales jobs—including selling doors—and worked as a brand manager, all while starting his first clinic in Binondo.
Today, GAOC is known for bringing modern, luxury-level dental care to the Philippines—far from the uninspiring clinics Gan once encountered. “You go to a dental clinic and it’s all about fixing teeth,” he recalls. “I looked at movies and saw some dental clinics there, but they were so different from what we have here.”
With GAOC, Gan turned that vision into reality, creating an experience that’s closer to a high-end medical spa than a typical clinic. What started as a side hustle between business gigs is now a pioneering dental empire.
“I wanted to change dentistry,” he says. “That was my goal—to become the number one dentist and oral surgeon in the country.”
And he did—one bold pivot at a time.
This article includes quotes from an interview originally published by Esquire Philippines, authored by Henry Ong.
