Michael J. Ward, MD, PhD, MBA is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Biomedical Informatics and Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a staff emergency physician at the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, Nashville. He is the Co-Site Director of the VA Chief Resident in Quality and Safety program, Chair of the Emergency Medicine Foundation Scientific Review Committee, and the Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Emergency Medicine. He completed his residency in emergency medicine and an operations research fellowship along with a PhD in operations management at the University of Cincinnati. He is a prior NIH/NHLBI K12 scholar and career development award recipient. His research is funded by the NIH and the Department of Veterans Affairs and is focused on healthcare delivery science. His mixed methods research program involves the development, implementation, and evaluation of systems-oriented interventions in acute, unscheduled care settings such as the emergency department, urgent care, and unscheduled primary care settings and draws on operations research, implementation science, qualitative methods, and informatics. His approach to mentoring focuses on harnessing the mentee’s intrinsic motivation for why they sought a career in emergency medicine to identify a personalized skillset while harnessing the power of networking to position mentees for long-term success.