Sharon Albright (D.D.S. '91)

This annual award recognizes a graduate who has completed his or her education within the last 10 years, exhibited outstanding service to the UMKC School of Dentistry, the dental profession and the community, and maintained the highest standards of professionalism.

Dr. Sharon Albright graduated from the UMKC School of Dentistry in 1991. Her professional aspiration to become a dentist had been delayed, but reaffirmed, by a brief career in accounting after she earned a B.S. degree in accounting at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee , Fla. After dental school she earned an AEGD certificate at the UCLA School of Dentistry and worked as a research assistant at the UCLA/Drew Minority Oral Health Research Center in Los Angeles , Calif. In 1993 she returned to Kansas City to serve as the dental director of the Cabot Westside Clinic. Since 1995 she served as a part-time clinical instructor at the School of Dentistry . Dr. Albright has been an avid, active and vocal advocate for patients who lack access to standard oral health care. Each year in September, for example, she played a major role in coordinating the Dental Care with a Heart program that delivers care to migrant farm workers. She is active in numerous dental organizations, and served on the board of the School of Dentistry ’s Rinehart Foundation in 1995-98. In 1998 she received the Colgate Bright Smiles/Bright Futures Award, and she has twice been nominated as the Provider of the Year, a National Honors Award of the National Health Services Corps. In the fall of 2000 she returned to California to pursue private practice.