Successful clinical trial leadership requires competencies in trial design, analysis, interpretation, as well as in reporting and dissemination of trial results, involving scientific, ethical, methodologic, publishing and lecturing expertise. Additionally, leadership is needed to be able to oversight the execution of trials, collaborate to engage research partners in all aspects of the work, and negotiate and manage interaction with diverse stakeholders and participants. Communication is essential to ensure an effective interaction between trial teams and participants, and to clearly report and disseminate research findings 1. These clinical trial research competencies need to be facilitated among the young and early career clinical scientists through specific training and interaction with leading experts in the field. Early career scientists are expected to be proactive and apply and register in research directories, attend networking events, and seek mentorship/sponsorship from the expert trialists 1. Furthermore, women remain underrepresented as cardiovascular (CV) specialists and as leaders of CV randomized controlled trials (RCTs), despite several calls towards mitigating these inequalities 1,2. Recent data have highlighted that participation of clinical trial academic leaders who are of a certain demography may be more successful in improving patient diversity 3. Increasing sex, ethnic and geographical diversity in clinical trial leadership and amongst site investigators, using innovative approaches to participant recruitment and monitoring, may narrow the sex/diversity gap in CV clinical trial participants. A recent metanalysis reported that among 158,200 participants in 157 RCTs investigating heart failure, only 18.5% were non-White, and female presence within the trial's leadership was associated with twice the odds of the reporting of race and ethnicity data 3 .