This grant supports an innovative training and professional development program at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to give early-career scientists and economists the skills needed to effectively conduct policy-relevant research in an applied setting, outside a college or university. Training covers such topics as communications, proposal writing, program management, and team leadership and features a series of workshops that separately target postbaccalaureates and postdoctoral researchers to reflect the different skill development needs of these two groups.   Funds from this grant will allow EDF to enhance and expand this program. Formerly focused on training EDF’s in-house junior scientists, the program will expand through a series of institutional partnerships to include other early-career researchers at other universities and NGOs. The curriculum will also expand to include a series of monthly in-person or virtual workshops on relevant topics, including data science and empirical research methods. Additional funds support efforts to track and evaluate the impact of the program, to place trained scientists in policy-relevant positions at NGOs or in government, and to distill and disseminate lessons learned to those institutions interested in starting similar programs. EDF plans to integrate aspects of this program into its standard professional development activities by the conclusion of this grant.