ProductsWhat to Look for in a Board Certified Dermatologist in NYC"How do I know a dermatologist is actually qualified to do this to my face?"
Two checks answer most of it. When you are comparing one board-certified dermatologist in NYC against another, confirm that the certification is in dermatology specifically, which you can do in about 30 seconds on the American Board of Dermatology verification tool, and confirm that the physician whose name is on the practice is the person who will hold the needle. Everything else on a credentials page, the academic title, the award lists, the television segments, is only useful once you know what each item tells you about the decisions that get made in the treatment room.
I want to walk through my own credentials that way, item by item, because a list of honors is not an argument. What matters is which part of the training shows up when your face is in front of me and the obvious treatment is the wrong one.
What board certification in dermatology actually covers
Dermatology residency is specialty training that follows an internship year, in a program accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education; the current program requirements for dermatology are published on its site. Those years are spent on skin biology and disease, reading biopsies under a microscope, surgical margins, laser and tissue interaction, and the facial anatomy that sits under an injection: which vessels run where, which muscle lifts the brow and which one pulls it down.
The phrase "board-certified" on its own does not tell you the field. Certification in family medicine, emergency medicine, or anesthesiology is a legitimate credential in a different discipline, held by physicians who may be very good at what they trained to do. The training is simply focused elsewhere. If you want the step-by-step version of how to verify this and what else to ask, I wrote a separate guide on choosing a dermatologist for cosmetic procedures, and a companion one for finding a dermatologist for a medical skin concern, where the criteria are different.
I am a Diplomate of the American Board of Dermatology and a Fellow of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery. My dermatology residency was at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, after medical school at SUNY Downstate and an internal medicine internship at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco.
Why an academic appointment changes how the work gets done
I am an Assistant Clinical Professor of Dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The practical effect of teaching is that you cannot treat by habit. A resident asks why you chose that dilution, that depth, that number of units on this face and not the last one, and a vague answer is not available to you.
My office is also a national training center for Allergan, where I guide physicians on Botox injection technique, and a national training center for Restylane. A number of injectors now practicing across New York City learned technique in this office. Teaching a technique repeatedly is what forces you to articulate the reasoning behind it, including the cases where the answer is to inject nothing.
The academic connection has a second, plainer use. For complex cases I collaborate with specialists at Mount Sinai, and for patients diagnosed with melanoma or complicated skin cancers I work closely with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, so a difficult finding at a skin cancer screening does not turn into a referral you have to arrange yourself.
Why 1992 matters for the injection you are getting in 2026
I began using Botox cosmetically in 1992, which made me one of the first physicians in New York City to do so. There was no cosmetic protocol then. Cosmetic approval for the frown lines between the brows came a decade later, with other facial areas added after that, as set out in the FDA-approved prescribing information for Botox Cosmetic. Dosing was worked out face by face, by watching what a muscle did after a small amount and adjusting from there.
That is still how I decide an amount, and it is why early experience is worth something concrete rather than sentimental. Having placed tens of thousands of injection treatments, I recognize the face that will drop a brow if the forehead is treated the way the patient is asking for it, and I know what a heavy lid looks like at week one versus week three. Two uses I am often asked about, jaw slimming and neck bands, are off-label uses of Botox, and I say that out loud before I treat rather than after. More detail on how I choose placement sits on the Botox page.
What a Top Doctor listing tells you, and what it does not
I have been named a Castle Connolly Top Doctor for many years running, I serve as a media spokesperson for the American Academy of Dermatology, and I wrote the "Skin and Hair" chapter in Women's Health for Life along with the book Skin Rules. The listing is peer-nominated, which is genuinely useful information: it means other physicians in New York City are comfortable sending patients here.
What it does not tell you is the thing you actually came to find out. It says nothing about the dilution used, who performs the injection, whether the consultation includes an exam of skin you did not ask about, or what happens if the result at two weeks is not what you wanted. An award listed without any explanation of method leaves those questions open, so ask about the method directly. You can read how patients describe the visits themselves in the patient reviews.
"Will the doctor be the one treating me, or someone else?"
At many high-volume practices in Manhattan, injections are delegated to a nurse practitioner or physician assistant. That is legal, and plenty of those injectors are skilled. The difference is in who is making the judgment call mid-treatment, when the plan on paper stops matching the face on the table.
I perform every injection in this practice myself, and have since 1992. What that allows in practice: a super-concentrated 1 cc Botox dilution rather than the more common 2.5 cc, micro-droplets mapped to how your particular face moves instead of a fixed course of injection points, vessel mapping with a device before I inject to reduce bruising, and chilled skin during treatment. Filler can be bought by the half syringe so a result is built across visits rather than committed to in one, which is a large part of why two injectors produce different results with the same product.
A meaningful share of my week is correction: filler placed too superficially somewhere else, a brow that dropped after treatment, lips that read as overfilled. That work is done in stages with undiluted hyaluronidase, and I have no interest in commenting on who did the original treatment.
What I check before I treat anything
Credentials matter mostly because of sequence. The failure I see is usually not bad technique, it is treating before investigating, since investigating is slow and unbillable.
So hair loss gets bloodwork before it gets a plan, because the cause is frequently a deficiency no procedure would have fixed. Acne gets an ingredient-level read of every product you use, sunscreen and makeup included, because the cause is often sitting in your own bathroom. Pigment gets suppressed with products before any laser or peel touches the skin, which is why melasma treated this way tends to be less likely to come straight back. And because I practice medical and cosmetic dermatology in equal measure, the mole you had not noticed gets looked at during the appointment you booked about frown lines. That combination is a good part of why patients choose a board-certified dermatologist over a medspa.
Five questions worth asking any dermatologist in New York City before you book:
- Is your board certification in dermatology, and can I verify it?
- Who performs the injection or laser treatment, you or a staff member?
- How often do you perform this specific procedure?
- How is the amount chosen for my face, and what happens if it is too little or too much?
- What is included if I need an adjustment in the first two weeks?
What the first visit involves
The consultation runs a full 30 minutes and covers the whole picture rather than the one item you booked about: I look at how your face moves, at tone and texture, at your skin history, and at the products you are using. Then we decide together what is worth treating now, what can wait, and what should be investigated first. A complimentary follow-up is included with every treatment, for evaluation and a touch-up if you need one, so you can start conservatively without paying twice. Botox here is priced by area rather than by unit, and the consultation is $250, credited toward treatment the same day or at a future appointment.
If you want to see the full list of appointments, training and publications behind all of this, it is on my credentials page. To come in, call the office at or request an appointment at 931 5th Avenue on the Upper East Side, and we will start with what is actually going on with your skin.
