medestheticsmagazine.com | APRIL 2014 57 medestheticsmagazine.com | APRIL 2014 57
By Stacy Gueraseva
Photography by Cory Sorensen
Zein Obagi, MD, has built his career on
advancing the field of dermatology through
personalized care and product development.
SITTING IN HIS MODERN, sundrenched offi ce at
the Obagi Skin Health Institute—an 8,000-square-
foot, fully-equipped dermatology practice in the
heart of Beverly Hills, California—Zein Obagi, MD,
seems a lifetime away from his days as a struggling
medical intern, who fl ed Syria for Detroit in the
early 1970s in search of better opportunities. T at's
where Dr. Obagi's medical story begins, and it is a
remarkable one.
Today, Dr. Obagi helms a dermatology empire that
encompasses three facilities in Southern California;
two skincare lines, ZO Skin Health and ZO Medical;
several educational seminars and courses, and a soon-
to-be-released book on skin health.
To understand how he got here, we fi rst have to
travel back to 1960s Syria, where a teenage Zein
Obagi was exposed to what he calls "certain disasters"
that propelled him towards a career in medicine.
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