The Mountain Sentinels network developed from a framing workshop entitled “Building Resilience of Mountain Social-Ecological Systems to Global Change: An International Synthesis and Grant-Writing Workshop” funded by the Mountain Research Initiative from Bern, Switzerland and the Colorado State University’s Office of International Programs and Warner College of Natural Resources in the US. Julia Klein, Anne Nolin and Greg Greenwood organized the workshop, with amazing facilitation by Leah Sprain and inspiring graphic design by Karina Mullen Branson. The workshop, held in 2011 in Estes Park, Colorado, was attended by a diverse, international group of experts on mountain hydrology, ecosystem science, human ecology and environmental governance to explore the dynamics of coupled human-natural systems as they relate to global change and well-being in mountain regions. One of the workshop objectives was to translate outputs from the workshop into a grant proposal to the US National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network program. We successfully accomplished this goal in spring 2014 when the expanded Mountain Sentinels network became a reality.