Sam Cotton, MSSW, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Geriatric Medicine, University of Louisville School of Medicine, assigned to the University of Louisville Trager Institute. She is a former Geriatric Academic Career Awardee (GACA). The primary focus of her GACA project is to educate urban physicians and other healthcare professionals practicing at the University of Louisville Physicians (ULP) specialty practices, along with the rural healthcare providers connected to ULP, on how to provide age-friendly care to their vulnerable rural older adult patients 65+ and their caregivers. She also serves as the director for the Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) initiative funded through the HRSA Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) grant. She manages the interprofessional education and training component of the Trager Institute. Her research interests focus on the needs of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers including developing innovative evidenced based practices for caregiving, infusing compassion into caregiving in both community and long-term care settings, and implementing alternatives to pharmaceutical interventions for individuals with dementia.