From Clinic to Conferences: How Heather Gates, PA-C, Blends Patient Care, Education, and Entrepreneurship in Her New Role

As the founder of Gateway Consulting & Management and a PA at The Dermatology Institute and Skin Cancer Center in The Villages, Florida, Heather Gates, PA-C, is blending her clinical expertise with entrepreneurial vision. In this exclusive Q&A with Dermatology Times, she shared how her passion for education led her to build a thriving conference management business while remaining deeply engaged in patient care and professional leadership.

Q&A

DT: How did your conference management business, Gateway Consulting & Management, come to be?

Gates: Gateway was an evolution. Originally, I was on the board of directors of the Florida Society of Dermatology PAs (FSDPA). I was their CME chair at one point, their vice president, and then president. I've been involved with them for about 8 years and helped out with conferences all along. And then when my presidency ended, they needed a conference manager, and everything just kind of fell into place. I offered to do it and start a business and do it the right way. So they took me up on my offer, and I'm so thankful that they did, because that organization holds a special place in my heart, just for the involvement that I've had with them over the years. Their New Wave Dermatology Conference and the Riptide Conference were always passion projects for me. So the fact that they kept me around and let me stay involved and help evolve the conference with them has been amazing.

As any entrepreneur knows, starting a business is no easy task. There's a lot of background work and paperwork and legal things, and you have to get the right team; people who work for your company, but also people who support your company, like lawyers and CPAs. So that has definitely been a long, grueling process, and it's very true what they say: when you're an entrepreneur, there are no days off. You're working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sometimes it feels like more than 24 hours a day. But I'm really lucky. I got into this because, in being part of the FSDPA, I realized conference planning was my passion. I can bring education to my colleagues and it's so rewarding. It's been a good ride so far, and I hope it continues for a very long time.

DT: What are some of the unique challenges associated with organizing conferences?

Gates: Not many people know what goes on in the background of planning conferences. There's so much that happens working with faculty, attendees, industry partners, and compliance teams. All of these societies work so hard to bring these things together, and the goal is that when attendees show up, it just looks effortless so that they can learn and enjoy it. For any conference, you always want to be presenting education that is at the forefront of medicine to your attendees. In dermatology, things change so quickly, and you want to make sure that these are being highlighted to attendees so that they can take that education back and give their patients the best, most up-to-date care possible.

In the planning process, the other aspect is keeping the way that your attendees learn fresh...so coming up with novel ideas like gamification or programs that target people early in their career, or target people in a specific subspecialty, so that people can really delve into the way they need to advance their education, and they can tailor it to themselves. Just keeping things fun so when they come back, it's not the same thing year after year. We're always being innovative and keeping people on their toes.

DT: What can attendees expect at some of your upcoming conferences and events?

Gates: Coming up, I have the Pennsylvania Dermatology PAs Keystone conference in Philadelphia. That's very exciting. It's my first time doing this conference, and it's such a great group of board of directors that are passionate about dermatology. So at that conference, we've got a lot of great speakers that are going to be talking on things that are newer in the field, talking about some newer indications. And then at the end of this year, in December, is FSDPA’s Riptide Dermatology Conference in Palm Coast, Florida. Riptide is really fun because it's a very boutique event. They only take 75 to 100 attendees, and they do a really good job at making it interactive. The speakers are great because it's very casual, and they will have a back-and-forth with the attendees from the stage, and they can just sit down and ask them questions. There's also a lot of lectures that are gamified, and we make it into a competition, which makes things really fun and exciting.

New Wave Dermatology is probably the largest conference that we plan for FSDPA. They get around 300 attendees at that event, and we have lots of new programs and innovations going on for 2026. As part of this, we're having our second annual Foundations in Dermatology program. Foundations in Dermatology is a program that looks for attendees who are 0 to 5 years in practice in dermatology, and it gives them education geared to where they are in their career. They get paired with a mentor, key opinion leaders in the field of dermatology, and they have 4 days on-site with their mentor just to soak everything in. But then they also have ongoing mentorship and can stay in contact with them if they have any clinical questions or need help with anything. We actually give these attendees a scholarship to come to the conference. When people are early in their career, going to conferences and events like this can be very expensive for them, so FSDPA covers their conference registration and their hotel stay and gives them a travel stipend to do so, so that we can get them there to get the education that they need and want.

Another exciting thing that we're planning is the inaugural National Dermatology Leadership Summit, hosted by FSDPA. Aaron Sookhoo and Andrew Mastro piloted this and it's going to bring together all of the state societies from across the nation for both PAs and NPs so that they can collaborate and help each other. It’s also to help newer societies or societies that are just forming, get their feet wet and learn what's worked and what hasn't worked in the past from societies that have already been through it. More established societies can help these newer societies learn how to grow, erase some of that learning curve that comes along with starting a nonprofit society, and help each other establish best practices in nonprofit leadership. As medical people, we don't learn how to run a nonprofit in school. That's not what we were trained to do. But somehow, as volunteers, everyone just figures it out. Now, people who have been there, done that, and figured it out, are going to help the newer people, so that way they don't have the challenges everyone else had. It's a large country and we're very spread out, to bring everyone together to create a collegial, collaborative working relationship and grow and learn from each other is just an invaluable resource overall.

DT: How do you balance these leadership and business roles with your clinical practice and life outside of work?

Gates: I ask myself how I do it every day. I think I just enjoy it and somehow everything just gets done. I work hard. If life isn't chaos, I'm not living it. And it may look like I'm doing all of this on my own, but I have a lot of help. Of course, the societies that I work for lead the way and inspire me every day. Since starting this business, I very quickly realized that I needed help. My husband, Andrew Gates, MBA, is now our director of operations. He has worked in business development and marketing, so he does a fantastic job at it. He's the glue that's keeping everything together in the background. I also have my on-site conference team, which is a bunch of the kindest, most hardworking, amazing people you'll ever meet.

And amongst all of this, I work 3 days in clinic, seeing patients, and then the other days of the week, I'm off running everything from Gateway at home. But because of this, it's given me the flexibility to actually spend more time with my family and my children too. I can customize my schedule so I can make it to all my daughter's activities and sporting events. I feel that between being a provider in clinic and being a business owner at home, it's actually made me a better mom and given me more time with my family, so I'm very thankful for that.

DT: What advice do you have for PAs and NPs who are looking to expand into leadership and other roles outside of clinic?

Gates: I've had lots of people ask me this question before, and everybody's going to find a different path. So my answer is always very simple. It's to find your passion, and by that, you're not going to find it in the first thing you try. Try different things, and eventually you will understand what you're passionate about, just like I figured out by happenstance that I was passionate about planning educational events. Once you find your passion, show up, volunteer, put yourself out there...keep showing up and just work hard at what you do. Because if it's your passion and you love it, it's not going to feel like work. And if there's something that you're interested in, whether it's volunteering with a leadership organization, working in pharma, or being on podium speaking at conferences, put your intentions out there and network, and you will make it happen if you work hard and believe in yourself.

Gateway Consulting & Management is currently taking new clients and open to working with any state societies. If interested, visit their website or reach out to Heather’s team on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

[This transcript has been edited for clarity]