ABSTRACT Moores Cancer Center (MCC) has a strong leadership structure and robust planning and evaluation procedures to ensure that the Center’s vision and goals are met, led by a Senior Leadership team with well-defined roles to foster collaborative, multi-disciplinary, translational efforts. Led by Scott Lippman, this team includesa Deputy Director and Associate Directors for Clinical Sciences, Population Sciences, Disparities, and Community Engagement; Basic Science; Shared Resources; Research Education and Training; and Administration. These Senior Leaders are all located in the MCC building, which greatly facilitates interaction and collaboration. MCC’s 5 Research Programs are co-led by experienced researchers with complementary expertise, who advise the Director to help guide MCC operations in areas such as faculty recruitment, program organisation, priorities for developmental funds, and MCC membership. MCC has well-organized structures that create an efficient process through which the Center can effectively plan, decide, monitor, adjust, and allocate resources, and respond to opportunities and changes in the research environment. An Executive Committee made up of Senior Leaders, consortium partner representatives, and clinical leaders of medicine, surgery, radiation oncology and pathology, and with ad-hoc attendance by the Dean and CEO serves as a senior advisory body to the Director and oversees operations of the following 4 committees: 1) a Senior Leaders Council that plays a vital role in planning, monitoring, and evaluating MCC; 2) a Shared Resources (SR) Oversight Committee that optimizes the ability of SRs to provide high impact, cost-effective support for MCC research; 3) a Pilot Grant Review Committee, and 4) a Space Advisory Committee. In addition, the MCC External Advisory Board (EAB) plays a key role in MCC’s planning and evaluation process. Our new Strategic Plan, developed in 2018, provides the vision, goals, scientific foci as well as tactics, strategies and resources for continued growth and impact. Our strategic goals, which are to: 1) advance excellent patient outcomes through innovation, education, and patient-centered care, 2) reduce cancer risk and improve survivorship by changing at-risk behaviors, 3) support outstanding basic, translational and clinical research programs to optimize translation of discoveries into novel treatments, 4) discover, develop and apply cutting-edge, individualized cancer treatments that optimize response, minimize toxicity and improve survival, 5) build outstanding research infrastructure including state-of-the-art Shared Resources to support exemplary basic, translational, clinical and population-science research, and 6) strengthen engagement and collaboration of faculty, staff and students with the community; reflect an emphasis on the clinical research arena, which will generate the greatest return in translating laboratory progress and improving treatments for cancer patients and cancer...