Veena Manja is a post-doctoral fellow with the Department of Health Policy and with the Center for Innovation to Implementation, Health Services Research and Development fellowship program affiliated with the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. She pivoted to a research career after practicing as a cardiologist for several years with the goal of improving implementation of evidence based practices. She completed a PhD (2019) from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and joined the fellowship in 2021. During her graduate studies, she worked on improving research methods and on evidence synthesis teams for evidence based guideline development for national and international organizations. Her dissertation focused on understanding the factors influencing evidence-discordant clinical decisions in cardiology and neonatology. Her current work broadly focuses on improving cardiovascular outcomes in individuals with a mental health condition or a substance use disorder with a focus on methamphetamine associated cardiovascular outcomes. She is a graduate of Mysore Medical College (MBBS), India and completed her residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Cardiovascular Diseases at the State University of New York in Buffalo, NY.