Lené Levy-Storms is an Associate Professor in the Luskin School of Public Affairs, Department of Social Welfare and the Geffen School of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics at UCLA. Dr. Levy-Storms’ primary research has focused on communication as a mechanism for social support and caregiving for older adults, especially those living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Since 2016, she has served as the academic representative on the California State Alzheimer’s Advisory Committee. Since 2004, she has partnered with Susan Kohler, a speech and language therapist and author of a book titled: “How to Communicate with Alzheimer’s”, to develop a behavioral training program for both family and non-family caregivers based on her book. They have produced a DVD series of peer-based, unscripted training modules on communication and an accompanying curriculum titled, “Get Connected”. With their innovation and UCLA’s Office of Intellectual Property’s agreement, Dr. Levy-Storms and Ms. Kohler started Connected Hearts, LLC in 2014 to promote their training programs outside of research. With funding from the National Institute on Aging, the Hartford Foundation, the American Medical Director’s Association, and the National Alzheimer’s Association, Dr. Levy-Storms developed methods of evaluating caregivers’ communication behaviors and has been using these methods to test “Get Connected” among a variety of caregivers and long-term care settings. She completed a pilot study, funded by the Archstone Foundation, in which both family and non-family caregivers participated in communication training simultaneously. In December, 2020, the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute funded Dr. Levy-Storms to implement a translational version of Connected Hearts’ training modules. Dr. Levy-Storms also does research on policies related to caregiver training and was a Health and Aging Policy Fellow from 2010-2014 in a program funded by the The John A. Hartford Foundation, West Health, and The Atlantic Philanthropies (https://www.healthandagingpolicy.org/). Also, 2020, she received additional internal funding from UCLA to continue her policy work in association with the UCLA Health Policy Research Center.