Since 2017, Rachel Ramoni, DMD, ScD has served as the Chief Research and Development Officer at the US Department of Veterans Affairs. VA research is embedded within one of the largest integrated healthcare systems in the United States, with active research programs at 104 VA medical centers across the country. At VA, Rachel is leading the effort to transform the program from a collection of independently-operating sites into a vast, integrated enterprise that can more efficiently deliver on its mission to improve Veterans’ well-being through research. Rachel often describes her role at VA as a dream job, given her passion for helping large research efforts to achieve impactful, real-world results. Prior to coming to VA, she led the team at Harvard Medical School that created SMART-on-FHIR, the data exchange format used by the major electronic health records and Apple HealthKit. Following that work, Rachel established and led the coordinating center for the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, which has the tagline, “solving medical mysteries through team science”. To date, this network of clinicians and researchers has diagnosed over 650 people living with previously mysterious medical conditions.