Karen A. Monsen, PhD, RN, FAAN, is an award-winning scholar and expert nurse informatician. She is co-director of the University of Minnesota Center for Nursing Informatics, Director of the Omaha System Partnership, affiliate faculty in the Institute for Health Informatics, and faculty in the Center for Spirituality and Healing. Dr. Monsen specializes in data management for intervention effectiveness research, quality improvement, and outcome evaluation in nursing and health care. Based on her years of public health experience and her insights from exploring big data methods with existing datasets, Dr. Monsen celebrates the power of shared understanding enabled by the use of standardized data. At the cross roads of research and practice, she champions intervention effectiveness research through three major initiatives: The Omaha System Community of Practice, The Omaha System Partnership for Knowledge Discovery and Health Care Quality; and The Omaha System Guidelines. These initiatives are face-to-face and Internet forums for research and quality improvement projects world-wide. Dr. Monsen is the author of over 70 published studies that have advanced the design, development and evaluation of clinical practice for diverse problems, programs, and populations.