Marlene C. Lira, MPH, is the Director of Research at Workit Health, a leading telemedicine organization committed to democratizing access to evidence-based care for substance use disorders. Her work spans clinical and policy research related to substance use, as well as advocacy related to public health policy. She was a multiple principal investigator on a Small Business Innovation Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and received an early career pilot grant from the Opioid Policy Tools and Information Center for Research Excellence (OPTIC) program at RAND Corporation. Marlene received her MPH in Epidemiology from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is a doctoral student in Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She was mentored for over a decade by addiction medicine faculty at Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. She resides in the vibrant city of Santa Fe, NM, where she actively engages in advocacy for accessible and effective strategies in mitigating harm from substance use disorders.