About us
Dr Dan Shaffer- Clinical Director
Dan is an experienced dentist who has a passion and flair for all things digital. His dental practice, a private digital restorative practice in hertfordshire, is well respected in the area by patients and dental professionals alike.
He manufactures the vast majority of dental restorations in-house and also runs a full service dental laboratory.
Being a registered technician as well as a practising dentist gives Dan a unique insight into technically demanding cases both from the laboratory and clinical points of view.
After being appointed Assistant Dean of City of London Dental School, Dan has delivered many lectures, workshops and courses for Dentists and technicians.
Over the past decade he has been training dental professionals on behalf of Dental Protection Ltd, delivering countless dentolegal workshops and in-house training programmes. He is passionate about encouraging the safer practise of dentistry in the UK.
He has been involved in making many videos, films, educational programmes and radio broadcasts around Digital Dental and Dentolegal subjects
Dan is also an improving bereavement care trainer for hospital teams and health care professionals within hospital environments.
He has a wealth of experience in NHS, private and community based dentistry. He has taught as a clinical teacher at Guy’s hospital, London and is a keen advocate for entrepreneurship and innovation in medical fields.
Dan believes that dental care in its modern form is most certainly team care. He encourages all members of the team to gain valuable skills within their scope of practice to enable them to reach their full professional potentials.
Dr Wayne Hirschowitz- Founder
Wayne qualified in South Africa in 1988 and completed post graduate training in 1998 and holds several positions including Clinical Director of Vantage Health; an IT telemedicine company and is a dental practice owner in Edgware, Middlesex.
Wayne has a special interest in Forensic Odontology and has been deployed abroad attending mass disaster incidents.
His love of teaching encompasses both at his Alma mater as well as mentoring troubled young people.
As an experienced clinical dentist, Wayne’s vision is to offer affordable, quality orthodontics through Active Aligners. Aligner therapy is traditionally supplied through large corporates or controversially, direct to consumer. However, Active Aligners philosophy is “For Dentists by Dentists”.
Ian Ellis- CEO
Ian joined Active Aligners UK in November 2020 having spent over seven years at Dentsply Sirona. Most recently Ian was UK Marketing Director with responsibility across the full dental portfolio. Ian led, developed and motivated a team of 16 to achieve business growth during a period of continuous organisational change. His customer-focussed team initiated well-crafted, differentiated campaigns that employed traditional, digital and e-commerce communication tools.
Ian also had responsibility for clinical education. His team delivered a comprehensive programme of focus groups & webinars peaking at 450 events per year and successfully ran the UK Academy & Showroom educating more than 875 dentists in over 90 events.
For the previous four years Ian was Head of Marketing for the developing markets, leading a team that delivered marketing and educational support to 70+ countries. He built marketing hub offices in Dubai, Moscow, Delhi & Warsaw and significantly increased market penetration of Dentsply Sirona brands.
Prior to that, Ian held senior roles in a number of companies across the Medical Device and Pharmaceutical sectors ranging from Blue Chip organisations (Baxter and Astra Zeneca) to start-ups such as GW Pharmaceuticals and Apatech. Ian has also gained valuable experience running his own consultancy business.
Ian has a BSc in Genetics and Cell Biology from the University of Manchester and is a keen gardener and amateur photographer.