Dr. Bari Levine: Building Bridges Through Smiles—From Peru to the Main Line
When a pre-dental student fell in love with orphaned children in Lima who shared communal toothbrushes, she made a promise that would reshape her entire career.
Dr. Bari Levine juggles the demanding schedule of a pediatric dentist, practice owner, mother of two, and global health advocate with the grace of someone who has found her true calling. As founder of Growing Smiles Main Line Pediatric Dentistry in Narberth and the dental non-profit, the Growing Smiles Foundation, she has provided over $600,000 in free dental care to underserved children in Peru while creating a revolutionary sensory-friendly practice that serves families throughout the Philadelphia and Main Line region. Her partnership with GET Included, Inc. has raised over $10,000 in donations for neurodivergent employment opportunities, and she’s pioneering sleep-disordered breathing awareness in pediatric dentistry—all while raising two children with her physician husband.
Dr. Bari Levine is a 2025 Main Line Parent Women of Influence Award Winner
Main Line Parent’s Women of Influence Awards celebrate exceptional women making significant impacts in our community. Bari was nominated by 2024 Women of Influence Winner and founder of GET Cafe by GETincluded, Brooke Goodspeed, and selected based on her achievements and dedication to creating positive change in her community. Each Women of Influence Award Winner has committed to support Family Focus Media’s core values. Together, we are committed to foster a sense of belonging and empowerment for all families. All backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations are welcome and safe with us.
Beyond the awards, our Women of Influence Luncheons and Speed Networking Night attendees come together as our Women of Influence Network, a community fostering connections, collaboration, and mutual support.
A Promise That Changed Everything
The moment that would define Dr. Levine’s career came in a Lima, Peru orphanage during the summer before dental school. As part of her Dental/Masters in Public Health dual-degree program at Temple University, she brought along a large bag filled with hundreds of toothbrushes to share with the children she was visiting.
“I was with five or six kids in their sleeping area, and I saw that they had communal toothbrushes. Nobody really had their own,” she recalls. “I was teaching them in the very little Spanish that I knew how to brush their teeth, and they were so excited to have their own toothbrush. I could see from them brushing how much decay they had. I just knew I had to come back here and help them.”
That promise became the foundation for seven years of humanitarian missions that grew from a small team of five to more than 50 volunteers annually. Partnering with a local dental school, they operated a full field hospital with seven portable dental units, providing comprehensive care while mentoring the next generation of dental professionals.
The impact extended far beyond individual patients. “We implemented a pretty extensive education program where kids filled out pre and post tests about oral health,” Dr. Levine explains. Her favorite memory involves discovering a group of children chanting the tooth brushing technique in Spanish—”outside where you chew, inside, outside where you chew, inside”—without any supervision. When they returned 10 months later, the educated children showed significantly better oral health outcomes than those they hadn’t had time to reach.
Choosing the Harder Path
While Dr. Levine had always planned to join her family’s established practice in Yardley—her mother, father, and brother are all dentists—life led her in a different direction. After having two children, the daily commute of up to 90 minutes each way became unsustainable.
“I don’t like being late, and I could only drop my kids off at 7 in the morning,” she says. “It was just a lot of stress for me.” Her family’s reaction surprised her. “They were very supportive. They kind of knew that I wasn’t going to be able to sustain that long term.”
Opening Growing Smiles Main Line Pediatric Dentistry from scratch in March 2022 meant taking a significant risk, but Dr. Levine’s confidence never wavered. “I always responded with confidence: ‘I have no choice—I will absolutely be successful.’ I trusted that by staying honest, doing the right thing, and treating every patient as if they were my own child, I would build something meaningful.”
Her biggest fear wasn’t financial failure—it was working without the daily collaboration of her mother and brother. “Dentistry can be very collaborative. Working with my mom and brother for many years, I was able to see how they approached treatment planning.” Technology has bridged that gap: “With cell phones and texting, if I have a question, I can just text them during the day.”
Creating Healing Spaces
What sets Dr. Levine’s practice apart is its thoughtful design for children with diverse needs. The office features sensory-friendly elements like a treehouse and gaming station, creating an environment where children with autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions can thrive.
The results speak for themselves. “In just the past month, I’ve had so many children with autism who never sat in the chair who are now getting cleaned by my hygienist,” she says. “Yesterday, I had a 12-year-old girl with debilitating anxiety around the dentist. Six months ago, she was jumping out of the chair, and yesterday she sat for my hygienist.”
One parent recently called her “their family’s personal superhero” in a review, adding “#notallheroeswearcapes.” For parents of children with special needs, Dr. Levine explains, “they know that coming to the dentist isn’t going to set their child off and that they actually become excited to come to the dentist. It’s one less thing that they have to worry about that’s going to be a fight.”
Learning from Imperfection
Dr. Levine’s approach to challenges reflects her philosophy that mistakes are learning opportunities. She performs in-office conscious sedation for young children—a complex procedure that few pediatric dentists in the area offer. During one particularly challenging case with a three-year-old, a filling came out twice despite her best efforts.
“I had to just figure out what is the best next step and learn from the experience how to be a better dentist,” she explains. “Dentists are usually so meticulous and want everything to be perfect, but we’re working in an imperfect environment. That’s why they call it the practice of dentistry.”
Expanding Impact Locally
Dr. Levine’s commitment to service continues through her partnership with GET Included, Inc., which began before she even opened her practice. “I wanted to find a local nonprofit organization to support,” she says. “From the first time we met, Brooke and I became very good friends. She’s become like a sister to me—the sister I never had.”
The partnership donates a portion of every new patient visit to GET Café, supporting employment opportunities for neurodivergent individuals. “We’ve surpassed over $10,000 in donations since we opened. It was a match made in heaven.”
Her foundation work has also shifted closer to home. After her last Peru trip—when she was transporting breast milk back to the US for her nine-month-old daughter—the logistics became too challenging for her growing family. An attempt to expand the model to Philadelphia schools proved “more difficult than going to Peru,” but the experience reinforced her commitment to local impact.
Pioneering Sleep Health Awareness
Dr. Levine is now tackling what she considers the biggest problem in pediatric dentistry: early identification of sleep-disordered breathing in children. “I believe it contributes to increased risk of dental decay because kids with sleep apnea are chronically breathing through their mouths and lose protective properties of their saliva.”
She’s started an interdisciplinary sleep study club with a local orthodontist that bringstogether medical doctors, dental specialists, and therapists. “The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry doesn’t recognize sleep-disordered breathing as a risk factor yet for dental decay, so I’m working on conducting research to change that.”
Balancing It All
Managing practice ownership, foundation work, and family life requires careful orchestration. “It’s a lot of planning ahead and getting up early before the kids to make them breakfast and lunch, make myself breakfast and lunch,” she says. With her physician husband leaving by 6:30 AM most days, they rely on babysitters and mutual support.
“Every day at work is different, which is nice because I do a lot of different procedures. I try to be as present with my kids as possible when I come home, but it takes a village.” She’s recently added tennis lessons twice a week—a reminder that self-care is part of sustainable leadership.
When explaining her work to her own children, she keeps it simple: “I have to help make kids’ mouths and bodies healthy. A lot of kids get cavities in their teeth, and when I treat them, I focus on making the experience fun and positive. That way, they’ll want to come back to the dentist — and hopefully grow up loving their dental visits as adults too.”
Looking Forward
Dr. Levine’s story demonstrates how personal calling and professional excellence can create ripple effects far beyond individual success. From Lima orphanages to Main Line treatment rooms, she has consistently used her skills to build bridges—between communities, between healthcare disciplines, and between fear and healing.
As she continues expanding her sleep health advocacy and mentoring other healthcare providers, Dr. Levine remains grounded in the lesson learned from those Peruvian children chanting their tooth brushing technique: education and compassion, delivered with consistency and care, can transform lives one smile at a time.
