Community-engaged research is a subspecialty of applied behavior analysis (ABA) that deals with socially important behaviors of interest to community residents, leaders, and organizations (Baer et al., Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1, 91-97, 1968; Wolf, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 11, 203–213, 1978). Community-engaged research today is a multidisciplinary enterprise. It requires a supply of leaders with specialized skillsets. Its core competencies encompass a range of theories, methods, analytics, and strategies that are drawn from ABA, community psychology, prevention science, and public health. Renewing the next generation of community engaged leaders at the Juniper Garden Children’s Project (JGCP) has been a high priority. Although the training of master’s and doctoral students has been ongoing since the founding of JGCP, our record of mentoring and supporting the preparation of 105 future community-engaged research leaders on externally funded professional development grants is a noteworthy accomplishment. This contribution to the special issue describes JGCP’s research leadership program (RLP) including its unique approach and outcomes. Personalizing these outcomes are the commentaries of three past mentees describing their experiences. Implications are discussed.
