Hello and welcome. I'm Ann and I will be your course director. I'm glad you've joined us for the leadership module. In this module, my colleagues and I will describe evidence-based models for effective leadership. You'll also gain practical leadership tips from some of my very favorite research leaders, both early career and extremely experienced senior scientific leaders. I strongly recommend that after each lecture, you watch the interviews for valuable information, personal experiences, and reflections. The most important thing to focus on as you begin this leadership session, is that being an effective leader means taking steps to align the words you say with the things you do. As a leader, you set a mission and vision for your work that reflects your personal values, and then show people how to contribute to your vision of a brighter future. That's what leadership is about, getting people to follow you. Leaders take on additional and specific roles when you're talking about leading specific people, such as your employees. In that case, you may take on management or mentoring functions. These are related to, but quite different in important ways from leadership. You take on leadership roles in any situation, where you're trying to engage others in your vision and get them to follow you. For example, a highly common occasion of leadership is when you as a research leader, reach out to colleagues to engage them in your new idea for a grant proposal. This grant proposal would be for funding for a research study and likely takes significant effort to create. These people don't work for you, you don't employ them, you're not their supervisor, you don't compensate them for this time, and yet you're going to lead them. You lead them by setting a vision, engaging them in your goals, enabling them to contribute, and recognizing and appreciating their individual contributions. Sound familiar? Research leaders have ready-made leadership challenges regularly as they engage in pre-award grantsmanship with teams, especially multidisciplinary teams. So you have many opportunities to practice and learn leadership skills. If or when that project gets funded, then you have a different set of roles and responsibilities as manager and administrator, and you will still be the scientific leader of that effort. For new research leaders, even if the only person you're in charge of is yourself, this is actually the perfect time to practice leadership behaviors. While you do your day job, you're preparing for future leadership roles. You don't want to wait until you have new responsibilities to fill skill gaps. Gain leadership skills and practice in low stakes situations. Sometimes the biggest advantage to leadership development for early career researchers is to actually work on your skills before you're in charge. You will find that as your leadership behaviors get you noticed in a good way, you will be invited to take on more visible, thought leadership, and positional leadership roles. You'll be seen as "ready to lead", and opportunities will start coming to you. I encourage you to join me as I introduce you to effective leadership behaviors. It's never too early or too late to be a better leader. I hope you enjoy this session, learn a lot, and are empowered to lead your research, your team, and yourself in a whole new way.