Rosemary Blieszner is Alumni Distinguished Professor and Senior Fellow at the Center for Gerontology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg. She received her PhD from Pennsylvania State University in human development–family studies with an emphasis in adult development and aging. Her research focuses on family and friend relationships, life events, and psychological well-being in adulthood and old age. She has studied the contributions of spirituality to resiliency and how families cope with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment in an old relative. Blieszner is coeditor of Older Adult Friendship: Structure and Process (Sage, 1989), Handbook of Aging and the Family (Greenwood, 1995), and Handbook of Families and Aging (2nd ed., Praeger, 2012) and coauthor of Adult Friendship (Sage, 1992), Spiritual Resiliency in Older Women: Models of Strength for Challenges through the Life Span (Sage, 1999), and Spiritual Resiliency and Aging: Hope, Relationality, and the Creative Self (Baywood, 2012). From 2008-2011 she was editor-in-chief of Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and she served as President of GSA in 2014. She is author of numerous articles published in gerontology, psychology, family studies, sociology, and personal relationships journals. Blieszner is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 20), Association for Gerontology in Higher Education, Gerontological Society of America, and National Council on Family Relations. In 1997–1998 she received the university’s Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence, and in 2002 she was named Alumni Distinguished Professor, a position held by 10 faculty members at the university.