. .	Whether by phone, or in the office, or now by e-mail, Beth Houlihan is the first person most of Dr. Fulmer's patients encounter. She will guide you through many of the stages of your dental care. As a student at U.W. Parkside, Beth had plenty of career ideas. After she took her degree in Business Administration, though, she didn't have to look for work: her abilities have always been in demand. From a position in Personnel at The Marine Exchange Bank in Racine, she moved on to work as a specialist in Human Resources at Kenosha Hospital. In this position, she became used to a fast-paced, multi-tasking environment that gave her a great deal of responsibility and allowed her to develop many administrative and management skills beyond those covered at business school. After taking time away from the workplace during which her three children were born and went through the toddler stages of their lives, Dr. John Cappelli asked her for assistance in personnel management at the Aurora Clinic. She expected this job would only last a few months, but those months grew into several years. In all of these jobs, she has enjoyed working with people, finding solutions to difficult and challenging problems, and, as a specialist in "Human Resources," finding out how many resources businesses can muster. Beth has shown very clearly that she can handle administration of large businesses. Patients at Dr. Fulmer's offices couldn't ask for a more highly skilled or able administrator. While he was a student, Beth's brother, James Fulmer, said that if he opened an office in Kenosha, he'd want Beth at the front desk. Dr. Fulmer opened his first office in Austin, Texas. When he moved back to Wisconsin and opened his first office at Paddock Lake, Beth was once more called on to help him set up the business. This was a challenging time for both siblings. Beth was her brother's entire staff during the early days of the practice. Due to an agreement with a dentist for whom Dr. Fulmer had previously worked, he couldn't advertise in the Kenosha area. This meant that they could only hang out a sign and build the business by word of mouth from the patients who chanced to walk in the door. In discussing how the practice has grown, each sibling gives the other a good deal of the credit. However much fun they can have joking about "who's really the boss," it seems clear that their ability to work together has contributed greatly to the practice. When patients say that "Dr. Fulmer is such a nice doctor - he's interested in meeting new people, he's gentle, he actually listens to what people say. . ." Beth adds, "well, he's such a nice brother. He comes by his abilities naturally." Many of these things could as easily be said of Beth herself. As a dental administrator, she is unpretentious, tries to understand what people want and need, really listens to what patients say, instead of simply pretending to do so. Like Dr. Fulmer, she knows how to put people at ease and how to make the dental health process as pleasant and free from trouble as possible. Although she works in the reception room, keeping schedules organized, supplies ordered, distractions minimized, and all the hundreds of small, almost invisible administrative tasks attended to, her job is essential to good dental practice. One of Beth's jobs is to minimize the time patients spend in the waiting room. In addition to being easy to talk to, patients sometimes take a few minutes before they notice that she wears braces on her teeth. Her children like to joke about their mother getting braces after they did. Dr. Fulmer refers patients who need braces to Dr. Crawford and Dr. Kozak - - the latter is Beth's orthodontist. In addition to Dr. Fulmer's practice, he sees part of his job as referring patients to specialists in other areas. Beth proves invaluable in the capacity of referring patients to orthodontists. She can give them a good idea of how much discomfort braces do and do not cause. Just as important, she clearly demonstrates that braces aren't just for kids, and that they don't make people look unattractive. Outside the office, two of Beth's favorite activities are travel and photography. Her husband, Mike Houlihan, teaches Physical Education at Pleasant Prairie Elementery during the school year, and works construction during the summer. While their children were young, this meant that Easter was the best time for travel vacations, and that's become a family tradition. Beth's brother-in-law speaks five languages, works for a multinational insurance company, and moves his office from one country to another at regular intervals. When Beth and her husband travel overseas, this means they get to see countries from a more familiar point of view and with more personal direction than most tourists. Whether visiting a foreign country or another part of the U.S., Beth sees travel as a form of continued education. Beth began taking pictures as a child, and has continued to develop her skills as a photographer since. One of her enduring themes has been women's purses. This is a profound and endlessly varied concept. Women often define themselves by their purses. They don't go many places without them, and the way they clutch or swing them can tell an observant person a good deal about how they feel about themselves and the world. A woman's purse can contain essentials ranging from money to credit and identification cards, handkerchiefs to snacks, personal notes to - what else? - the essential family photos. (If you'd like to see some of Beth's photos, click here [when I have the photos ;-)].) As a personal talisman, Beth started carrying a stone with the word "imagination" painted on it. As with other items in her own purse, this charm identifies a personal characteristic particularly important to her - and it says a lot about her hopes and aspirations. More recently, her daughter ________________ gave her a similar stone with a word she thought characterized her mother better. The word on this stone is "nurture." The talismans now travel together in Beth's purse. They seem to get along with each other very well. For a woman who has acted as personnel specialist in a bank, a hospital, and a clinic, they make an unusual but dynamic pair. What more could patients at a family dentist's office ask for?	..