In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education launched the highly competitive Investing in Innovation (i3) initiative. School districts and nonprofit partners nationwide have competed for coveted funds to develop a new program, validate an existing program with some evidence of success, or scale up a program backed by ample evidence. Very quickly, however, it became clear to the community of family engagement grantees that i3 was not going to be the panacea for the field's struggles to prove itself worthy. This issue of "Voices in Urban Education" ("VUE") provides an opportunity for i3 grantees to share the real story of what it takes to successfully implement and scale up a family engagement initiative across schools, districts, and states. "VUE" gave authors a fairly general prompt: "What lessons can we learn from i3 grants about how to build the right conditions for family engagement initiatives to flourish?" Interestingly, author(s) focused on the people--and the relationships among those people--that made their work possible. The authors describe the transformative work that has happened both within and outside of schools, and they openly share the long and sometimes painstaking journeys that have led them to where they are today. Together, the articles in this issue have important implications for family engagement practitioners, funders, and policy-makers.