The Gerontologist is a leading light of gerontological thought and scholarship. It is through the articles published in its pages that I cultivated my own professional and academic passion as a gerontologist. Well before I received any formal education in gerontology, I recall reading The Gerontologist in my undergraduate college’s library to try to familiarize myself with the key issues and topics driving the field. As I have progressed through my academic and professional career, first as a graduate student and later as an author, peer reviewer, and then Editorial Board member of The Gerontologist, the journal remains to me (and hopefully to many of you) as the lodestar of our field. It is thus with anticipation and some trepidation that I assume the Editor-in-Chief role of this critically important journal, mindful of its 54-year old legacy as well as of its essential position as a, if not the, leading academic outlet of gerontology.