The diversity of membership in the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) is one of its principal assets. This diversity is now exemplified in MRI's Science Leadership Council, composed of active mountain researchers from around the world and charged with leading the MRI. The first major task of the Science Leadership Council was the development of MRI's Strategic Plan, a document that makes explicit what has been implicit for years in MRI's activities. The Strategic Plan provides a common vision, a focused mission, a set of guiding principles, long-term goals, and more specific and measurable objectives. It provides the framework for MRI's most recent grant application to the Swiss National Science Foundation and similarly guides the progress of the MRI toward its vision.