Our Team

We’re Really Your Team

KLOwen has brought together an amazing combination of innovators, scientists, production specialists, and orthodontic industry pros who share a unified passion to help orthodontists deliver exceptional results in the most efficient way. We believe that orthodontists are now, and will always be, the key ingredient in delivering a great patient experience and that our job is to equip our specialists with the tools they need to remain competitive without sacrificing quality.

Dr. Brandon Owen

Orthodontist, Owen Orthodontic Center
Founder | Chairman | President KLOwen Braces

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Kirsten Morbeck

KLOwen Braces, Member of the Board
Spring Rock Ventures, Managing Director

Kirsten Morbeck

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Vijay Dhaka

CEO | Co-founder, CADflow.ai
KLOwen Braces, Member of the Board

Vijay Dhaka

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John Harris

KLOwen Braces, Member of the Board
Jazz Venture Partners, Managing Director

John Harris

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Jerry Metz

Chief Operations Officer

Jerry Metz

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Jay Widdig

Chief Financial Officer

Jay Widdig

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Corey Blackham

Vice President, Customer Experience

Corey Blackham

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BRANDON OWEN, DDS, MS

BRANDON OWEN, DDS, MS, is an internationally renowned lecturer on lingual and digital orthodontics and TMD. He is also an ortho-inventor with over 15 years hands-on practice experience.

As President and Founder of KLOwen Braces, Inc., he is the mastermind behind the KLOwen Custom Digital System; a feat that earned him the first-ever AAO OrthoInnovator Award (2019) and AAO investment funding.

He has dedicated his professional life to giving patients confident, custom smiles and to the enhancement and preservation of the profession he loves.

Evidence of his passion for improving the specialty includes the invention of the patented KLOwen custom brackets accompanying digital workflow system. Owen was the first orthodontist in North America to do in-office digital indirect bonding and to do a CAD/CAM 3D printed night guard. He is an advisor for various 3-D printing companies regarding the development of better resin formulation for IDB tray creation to meet appropriate flexible-firm balance.

Owen holds numerous other orthodontic patents including the Tripod Splint, Repositioning Software and Bracket Pad Extension.

He served as lead consultant for lingual braces and consultant for digital orthodontic systems (GAC Dentsply); on the clinical advisory board of SureSmile, Elemetrix and as Key Opinion Leader for EnvisionTEC 3D printers, Asiga 3D printers, SprintRay 3D printers, Keystone, Voxel Dental, OrthoSelect, Reliance Orthodontic Products.

During his career, Owen has owned three orthodontic practices, including a new practice-of-the-future launch.

Owen was named Top Orthodontist, 5280 Magazine (’09-’20), earned the Colorado Dental Association Outstanding Leadership Award (’12) and the International College of Dentists Award (’16). During his master’s and doctoral degree programs, Owen earned the Englund Academic Excellence Award (’01-’02); Outstanding Research Award (’02); Fenske Memorial Scholarship (’03); Hinman Scholarship and Conference Award (’03);

Among his impressive professional memberships, the Angle Society (Midwest Component), the American Association of Orthodontists Foundation (Vanguard member); College of Diplomats of the American Board of Orthodontics; Orthodontic Advisor to the Mountain West Dental Forum; Colorado Dental Association Board of Trustees; American Academy of Facial Esthetics; Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society; Omicron Kappa Upsilon Honor Society.

His current research (University of Alberta) includes space opening mechanics of mushroom shaped vs. straight wire for the use of lingual orthodontics using the OSIM (orthodontic simulator); space closing mechanics of mushroom shaped vs. straight wire for the use of lingual orthodontics using the OSIM; Class II elastic configurations (a comparison) using the OSIM); Transverse expansion comparison between labial arch wires, mushroom shaped lingual arch wires, and straight lingual arch wires using the OSIM.

KLOwen Braces is a legacy company, named and dedicated by Brandon and his wife Nicole to their son Keller Logan, who passed unexpectedly (2011). The couple, along with their two children and lovable, rambunctious pup-dog Barkley, make their home Lakeway, TX.

KIRSTEN MORBECK is Managing Director of SpringRock Ventures. She has spent the past twenty years building and investing in early stage technology and healthcare companies. Her investment portfolio includes ten investments in companies that have gone public or been acquired.

She has made notable investments across four sectors: (i) healthcare (Vascular Solutions (VASC), Pet’s Choice (acq by VCAI)); (ii) mobile (Tegic Communications (acq by AOL), (iii) software (Sabrix, acq by Thomson), and (iv) internet services (InterNAP (INAP), aQuantive (acq by MSFT) and BlueBox (acq by IBM)). In addition to KLOwen Braces, Kirsten currently serves as a Board Director/Observer for six venture-backed companies including Opya Care, Saykara, Virtudent, InDemand Interpreting, Hint Health and Bright.md.

Her venture experience includes senior investment professional positions with Mohr Davidow Ventures, and two successful regional venture funds. Kirsten was a Board Director and Chair of the Strategic Committee for Wireless Matrix Corporation, a publicly-traded, leading fleet management SAAS company that was acquired by CalAmp Corporation (WRX/CAMP) in 2012.

Operationally, Kirsten co-founded a mobile security company in 2007 that was backed by Shasta Ventures, MDV & Bezos Expeditions, and was acquired by Visa in 2016. In addition, she has worked for Microsoft’s Seed venture group, Archon Capital, and Lehman Brothers.

Kirsten is married with a son. She was an All-American lacrosse player while earning her degree at Middlebury College.

“Great medical devices deliver value to both patient and the orthodontists – and KLOwen braces do just that: achieve the standard of care with fewer visits.” — Vijay Dhaka

VIJAY DHAKA believes in creating patient impact through innovation. Over his 20+ career in healthcare technology he has managed company strategy, fundraising, product development, intellectual property, QMS implementation, manufacturing and operations scale up. Vijay is currently CEO and co-founder of CADflow.ai, an automated workflow solution that use AI to dramatically reduce the time and complexity to design patient specific medical prosthetics.

Previously, Vijay co-led raise over $70 million in venture capital as a founding team member and Chief Business Officer of INBRACE, a personalized medical device company.

As a consultant at McKinsey & Co. he focused on medical device, pharma, and hospital systems driving innovation through strategy, organizational transformation, and private equity due diligence.

Vijay Dhaka began his career in product development and pre-commercial launch preparation at venture-backed Class II and Class III medical device companies, with combined exits over $1 billion including: VNUS Medical Technologies (IPO; acquired by Covidien), Adiana Inc. (acquired by Cytyc, currently Hologic), and Oratec Interventions (acquired by Smith+Nephew).

In addition to his current roles, Vijay is also a Board Member at the PHASE ONE Foundation, a non-profit focused on de-risking innovative cancer treatments, and is an Advisory Board members of University Lab Partners, a wet lab incubator supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Orange County, CA.

Vijay is a graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management with an MBA in Strategy, and holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

JOHN HARRIS is a Managing Partner at JAZZ Venture Partners and is a seasoned investor, operating executive, and corporate director with significant experience founding, funding, and developing early-stage life sciences and technology companies.

Prior to JAZZ, John was the Founder, President and CEO of NeuroVista (acq. by Cyberonics), a Seattle-based medical device company pioneering new technologies for the management and treatment of epilepsy.

He was also a Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Northstar Neuroscience (IPO 2006 and subsequently acq. By St. Jude Medical). Earlier in his career, John was a founder of Heartstream (IPO 1996 and subsequently acq. by Hewlett-Packard).

He is on the board of numerous JAZZ portfolio companies including Blue Note Therapeutics, Foresight Mental Health, and Nextstep.

John earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.

JERRY METZ has more than 30 years’ experience in the medtech, healthcare, technology, and software-as-a-service sectors. He brings an extensive array of operations experience to KLOwen Braces, including business modeling, culture building, rapid scaling and lean six sigma practices. Jerry served as chief operations officer for OraMetrix, Inc. (2006-2021), a top provider of innovative 3-D orthodontic technology solutions eventually acquired by Dentsply Sirona Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY) in May 2018 ($150M US).

Jerry was part of the management team that built OraMetric’s SureSmile platform. In his role Jerry led, directed, constructed, and executed the SureSmile operations scaling plan.

Prior to OraMetrix, Jerry held various roles in advance engineering, and manufacturing supply chain management for various technology and semiconductor startups.

Jerry holds a Master of Business Administration degree (Southern Methodist University) and a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering (University of Texas).

Mr. Jay Widdig has more than 35 years of experience in the medtech, healthcare, technology, and software-as-a-service industry sectors and brings an extensive array of financial experience to KLOwen, including a background in corporate finance, M&A transactions, and financial planning and analysis with both global public and private companies.

From 2002 to 2020, Mr. Widdig served as Chief Financial Officer of OraMetrix, Inc., a leading provider of innovative 3-D orthodontic technology solutions that was acquired by Dentsply Sirona Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY) in May 2018 for approximately US$159 million. From 1999 to 2002, Jay Widdig served as Chief Financial Officer of Intrusion Inc., a publicly-traded network security company. Before joining Intrusion Inc., Mr. Widdig held various managerial positions, including senior director of finance and administration, at Cyrix Corporation, a semiconductor company and he served Texas Instruments and Halliburton Company in various financial roles. Mr. Widdig holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Oklahoma City University and a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Cameron University.

COREY BLACKHAM started with KLOwen Braces prior to product launch as Vice President of Operations in March 2019. In that post he worked diligently to train early adopters, created initial branding and messaging collateral, assisted in hiring and setting up the e-commerce platform on our first website as well as other outreach processes.

Now serving as Vice President of Customer Experience at KLOwen, Corey leads our customer success effort. His role includes welcoming, training and assisting new smile providers and their teams. He continues to play an integral role gathering and distilling valuable case data information for KLOwen’s messaging, research, and development efforts.

Corey does not believe in taking short cuts. His personal regard for KLOwen orthodontists is evident. He is passionate in his role to help with the successful implementation and training of the KLOwen system in orthodontic practices, working directly with orthodontists and their staff. Since Corey was young, he always wanted to work in the healthcare industry to help people.

Prior to working at KLOwen, Corey worked with dental laboratories (2008), and orthodontic laboratories since 2009. He implemented and directed new digital orthodontic products and systems that produced significant growth for the businesses for which he worked. Corey finds great satisfaction in problem solving, process improvement, and driving success for companies and customers.

Corey earned his business degree at Utah Valley University. He is married with 3 children.