Former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins and mRNA vaccine developer Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire put themselves on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic, using their special access to communities of faith and color to build trust in vaccine science. At the White House, in community health clinics, and in countless media appearances, including with Washington Post associate editor Frances Stead Sellers who joins them here, they sought to counter misinformation and explain decision-making in public health. Now, as Collins leaves his lab at the embattled NIH and Corbett-Helaire builds hers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, they look back on the pandemic and how well prepared it left the country, and a new generation of scientific leaders to tackle emerging microbes that could present equal or greater challenges to humanity.