Mr. Facundo is a US. Army Veteran who served two deployments to Operation Iraqi Freedom as an enlisted servicemember. Upon separating, his injuries forced him to pivot from studying literature and creative writing to a career in Social Work. During graduate school, he participated in community engaged research with a VA investigator and continued to partner while serving as the Veterans Resource Center director at Portland State University. He later left PSU to join the VA as a research project manager and qualitative data analyst, and has served in that role since 2016. As community engagement in research was what brought him into VA, in 2019, he joined an ORH funded project called Growing Rural Outreach through Veteran Engagement (GROVE), and co-designed a consultation service that eventually became the GROVE Center. In his role as program manager, he organizes and facilitates consultations, engagement activities, a website to connect researchers to Veterans and Caregivers, and continues various roles in VHA quality improvement projects.