about the practice
Two founders, fifty years, one address.
Most dental practices have a founding. This office has two — and together they explain everything about how the place runs.
The first founding happened in 1975, when Dr. Taylor opened Crozet's first dental practice and began treating the town's families. "Serving Crozet for 50+ years" isn't a slogan here — it's arithmetic. Some of today's patients had their first cleaning in this practice as children, in a town that remembers.
The second happened in 2012. In 2012, Dr. James Willis founded Willis & Associates from this Crozet office with a staff of five — and grew it into Virginia's largest doctor-owned dental group, now 23 locations. Crozet isn't a location this group added — it's the room where the group began.
What the first founding means for you
Longevity in a small town isn't a marketing line; it's an audit. A practice doesn't hold a community's trust across five decades by upselling neighbors it will see at the market on Saturday. The habits that survive that long — plain talk, careful work, patience with nervous kids — are the ones this office was built on, and Dr. Taylor's founding standard is still the house standard.
His story, and the practice's, gets the fuller telling on our practice history page.
2012 — the second founding
By 2012, the practice Dr. Taylor built had been caring for Crozet for nearly four decades. That year, Dr. James Willis — a young WVU-trained dentist with a staff of five and no outside money — made it the first office of something new: Willis & Associates.
The group grew the unfashionable way: one practice at a time, no private equity, run by Dr. Willis and his wife Jess, who raise their family a few miles down the road. Today it's Virginia's largest doctor-owned dental group — 23 offices across the state — and the habits every one of them runs on were formed in this practice: plain explanations, numbers in writing, the person before the tooth.
Crozet isn't a location on the map of Willis & Associates. It's where the map started.
Today
Drs. Marissa DeAngelis, Amina Parvez, and Sophia Ellia carry the practice now — three full-time doctors, 13 operatories, and at least two doctors in the building every weekday. The longest-serving dental team in Western Albemarle, still seeing new patients the same week they call.
“Groups like this usually get bought. This one got built.”
Questions we hear in the chair
- Is Crozet Family Dental locally owned?
- It's doctor-owned — founded by dentists, run by dentists, without private equity. Willis & Associates, the group Dr. Willis founded in this office in 2012, is Virginia's largest doctor-owned dental group, and this practice is where it started.
- Can I still see Dr. Taylor or Dr. Willis?
- Dr. Taylor has retired — his fifty-year legacy is the practice itself. Dr. Willis sees select cosmetic and smile-design cases by personal referral only; start with a consult with any of our doctors and they'll refer qualifying cases.
- Who practices here now?
- Senior dentists Dr. Marissa DeAngelis — the longest-tenured doctor in the group — and Dr. Amina Parvez, alongside associate dentist Dr. Sophia Ellia. All three, full time.
Serving Crozet for 50+ years. At least two full-time doctors in the building, Monday through Friday.