PROJECT SUMMARY – LEADERSHIP, PLANNING AND EVALUATION The transformative advances of the Wistar Cancer Center during the last five years would not have been possible without the combination of stable and experienced Cancer Center leadership and the coordinated activities of planning and evaluation venues. Relying on the near complete identity between Wistar Institute and Cancer Center, where 90% of Wistar faculty are Cancer Center members and the Cancer Center Director is also Institute President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), planning and evaluation venues leveraged a small but effective set of advisory committees, incorporated timely input from faculty-driven consultative venues and proactively engaged all institutional stakeholders in the “ownership” of strategic planning and implementation steps. This enabled an expansive recruitment campaign that appointed new scientific, administrative and advisory leaders, a strategic realignment of Cancer Center Programs with the creation of a new Genome Regulation and Cell Signaling (GRCS) Program, a large, $14.8 million expansion of all eight Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG)- supported Shared Resources and best practice Cancer Center governance with judicious and strategic allocation of pilot project funds for expanded transdisciplinary collaboration. Creating a new paradigm for how a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated “basic” Cancer Center can drive societal impact, planning and evaluation venues advanced four Wistar discoveries to investigator-initiated, first-in-human oncology clinical trials, spearheaded a new initiative in population health science and cancer risk jointly with the Helen F. Graham Community Cancer Center, and pioneered ‘work-study’ programs in collaboration with regional Community Colleges that redefined workforce development, job creation and public-private partnerships in the life sciences. Emerging from these advances, the Wistar Cancer Center of 2025 is home to two Specialized Program