As director of the Center for Long-Term Care Quality & Innovation (Q&I), I use my experience with stakeholder engagement and quality improvement to create effective research partnerships and to ensure that interventions are designed and tested in ways that reflect the real-world conditions in which providers operate and older adults live. The pragmatic research program that I created focuses on moving interventions along the interventional research continuum from design to effectiveness testing and dissemination. It also expands national capacity for the conduct of such research, through training and infrastructure grants and via funding opportunities.