Ask a Wake Forest parent where their kid got braces and you will hear the same name more often than chance would predict.
That kind of market position is not an accident, and it is not entirely about teeth.
Dr. Jason Gladwell
He took his Doctorate of Dental Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Dentistry, where he was elected to the Omicron Kappa Upsilon dental honor society. His orthodontic training was at VCU’s Medical College of Virginia campus in Richmond, where he earned a Master of Science in Dentistry.
After several years in Richmond he came back to North Carolina. The practice opened in July 2008 and now runs eighteen years deep.
He lives in Wake Forest with his wife, Anna, their daughter Olivia, their son Jason, and two boxers named Roxy and Lola. He fishes, golfs, and follows sports. That is a lot of detail for a professional bio, and it is there on purpose: the practice’s whole positioning rests on being local rather than clinical.
His own stated focus is making each patient feel at home, and he has said the friendships built with patients and their families over the years are the part he values most.
It is not a one-doctor practice anymore
Gladwell Orthodontics now runs three locations: Wake Forest at 2824 Rogers Road, Raleigh at Wakefield Pines Drive, and Durham on Fayetteville Road.
The doctor roster has grown with it. Dr. Adrian Hankewycz, Dr. Steven Petritz, and Dr. Ben Anders all practice alongside Gladwell, and reviews also name Dr. Ricci.
That growth matters practically. Multiple orthodontists across three offices means appointment availability across a wider window, and it means the practice can take on complex cases and a large adult Invisalign caseload alongside the standard adolescent work.
The Wake Forest office sits about five miles north of I-540, behind The Factory at the corner of South Main Street and Rogers Road.
What patients actually write about
Two themes dominate, and only one of them is about orthodontics.
The first is how the practice handles children who are frightened. One parent brought two sons for evaluations, the younger with special needs and very anxious. Her review describes staff taking their time with both boys, explaining every option, and going through treatment plans in detail. Another described an office organized enough to keep siblings occupied while one child was being seen.
That is a specific operational competence. Orthodontic offices process a lot of nervous eleven-year-olds, and most of them are fine at it. Being consistently good at it, across several years of reviews, is harder.
The second theme is the Starbucks.
There is a Starbucks machine in the office and it is free. Donations from it go to a local charity or organization. One reviewer called this her favorite part of the practice, on the grounds that the office was not only straightening her kids’ teeth but giving back to the community while doing it.
It is a coffee machine. It also comes up in review after review, which tells you something about how small gestures land when someone is sitting in a waiting room for the fourth time that year.
Beyond that: braces and Invisalign for both adolescents and adults, flexible weekday hours, payment options that reviewers describe as workable, and an after-hours emergency line for the Saturday night when a wire comes loose.
The criticism, stated plainly
Wait times.
This is the most consistent complaint across review platforms, and it deserves to be in a piece like this rather than left out. Multiple patients describe waiting close to an hour past an appointment time after being told the wait would be short. Some also report difficulty getting the appointment slot they wanted.
That is the predictable cost of scale. A practice this size running three offices is optimizing for throughput, and throughput and punctuality pull against each other. If you are choosing an orthodontist, it is worth asking directly how they schedule and what a typical wait looks like at the time of day you would come.
There are also negative reviews from former employees on Indeed describing management and turnover issues. Employee reviews are a different animal from patient reviews and should be weighed as such, but they exist and a reader making a decision may want to know.
Why it became the default
Three things, roughly in order.
Longevity. Eighteen years in one community means a generation of kids has now gone through, and their parents recommend what they know.
Convenience. Three locations, wide hours, an after-hours line, and a Wake Forest office positioned right where families already drive for The Factory.
And the tone. The practice has spent considerable effort on being the office where an anxious kid is handled gently and a parent gets a real explanation. For a service every family with children eventually needs and nobody enjoys, that turns out to be the thing people remember.
Gladwell Orthodontics, 2824 Rogers Road, Suite 200, Wake Forest. gladwellorthodontics.com