Dr. Mary Jo Pugh is excited to be a mentor on the “University of Utah Program to Provide Pain Research Knowledge (UP3RK)” that will train the next generation of pain investigators. Over the past 20+ years Dr. Pugh’s research funded by the VA, DoD and NIH has focused on complex comorbidity, and more recently complex comorbidity in Veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Major components of that complex comorbidity include pain, substance use disorder and mental health conditions. She has conducted foundational longitudinal epidemiological research identifying phenotypes of pain and pain treatment and associated outcomes using large database, clinical evaluation, biological and neuroimaging biomarkers, longitudinal survey, and ecological momentary assessment. The emerging work is focusing on quality and equity of care for Veterans with complex comorbidity phenotypes in conjunction with long-term outcomes. Dr. Pugh has mentored undergraduate, graduate, MD, and PhD trainees, and junior through tenured faculty. In addition, her post-doctoral mentees have received research career awards and have obtained large research grants. She uses a matrix mentoring approach where each mentee has at least one scientific mentor, one professional development mentor, and one content mentor. Dr. Pugh involves graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty in mentoring research staff, undergraduate students, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows so that there is a near peer component that allows each mentee to gain some experience in mentoring. As a testament to Dr. Pugh’s mentoring expertise, she was recently funded by the Department of Defense to co-lead a national program for Post-traumatic Epilepsy Research. Throughout Dr. Pugh’s career she has been strongly supportive of hiring, training, and working with diverse staff and collaborators as she believes only through Addressing Diversity can we move the needle on improving the quality of research, clinical care and patient outcomes. Over the years her staff/mentees have included over 30 individuals meeting criteria by NIH for under-represented minorities, including 10 (of 30) current staff, fellows, and graduate students. Dr. Pugh has been a mentor for junior faculty for the Utah Health Equity, Leadership and Mentoring program for the past two years and mentor diverse junior faculty across the country related to epilepsy research. She believes the diversity in her teams over the past 20 years, and her approach to Addressing Expectations, where mentees explore their own interests while working on my projects, is a large part of the success of the work and the success of mentees. She meets weekly with junior mentees and monthly with more senior mentees. These meetings are led by the agenda of the mentee. Dr. Pugh has learned that Maintaining Effective Communication requires that she also adapts to the communication styles of the diverse mentees. This approach has allowed her to Foster Independence, by supporting personal, professional and scientific accomplishments. While professional and scientific accomplishments are often the focus of mentoring outcomes, she celebrates personal accomplishments as much or more because Dr. Pugh knows without personal accomplishments and priorities, scientific accomplishments are hollow and less likely to occur. In addition to research expertise, Dr. Pugh believes it is critical to Promote Professional Development in mentees. As the first person in her family to attend college, she realizes how critical this is—particularly for those who do not grow up in a home with academic cultural capital. In addition to regular mentor-mentee sessions, Dr. Pugh’s team has developed a dedicated monthly seminar to provide peer mentoring on issues relevant to professional development focused on how to communicate individual research programs using “elevator speeches” and issues specific to advancing academic promotion. Dr. Pugh encourages (and financially supports) her mentees to attend professional research conferences, introduces them to colleagues with similar or related interests to facilitate additional collaborations which allow them to develop independent research careers.