Rick McGee, PhD, received BS and PhD degrees in biochemistry from the University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa, respectively. He is currently the Associate Dean for Professional Development at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. In that role, his primary responsibility is to support the development of independent research programs of early career faculty. To achieve this, he has developed a novel approach to teaching grant wiring by leading coached writing groups that last 2-4 months. At any point in time 4-6 groups will be ongoing with 3-6 people/group. His career path to creating this unique role began with 20 years of laboratory research in basic neuroscience and cellular pharmacology. His roles then evolved to designing and leading research training at multiple levels, during which he began developing novel coaching models to complement research mentoring. During this evolution, he became interested in actually studying how young scientists develop using sophisticated qualitative research methods and established social science theories and models. A strong theme throughout his career has been in diversity efforts related to both gender and racial/ethnic equality. Today, in addition to his professional development role, he leads a team of social science and education researchers in the NIH-funded National Longitudinal Study of Your Life Scientists. They are also following the outcomes of PhD students who took part in a novel career coaching experiment, The Academy for Future Science Faculty. Dr. McGee also leads an NIH-funded diversity-focused professional development program for early PhD students at Northwestern (the CLIMB program), and is deeply involved with new approaches to promoting effective mentoring relationships, culturally aware mentorship, and grant writing skills through the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN).