We are an interdisciplinary group of colleagues dedicated to partner engagement and team science. This influences our academic work, informs our research mentorship and capacity-building initiatives with junior scholars, conditions how we communicate with individuals outside of our disciplines, and makes lifelong learning a priority for ourselves and our trainees. Using the analogy of a seven-layer cake, this paper describes our capacity-building approach to develop, engage, and sustain research teams in a manner that aligns with health and risk communication principles. While preparing for a pandemic and engaging in team-based academic research may seem like apples and oranges, they both require the same key component throughout the process that we must encourage in our mentorship practices - effective communication. We provide concrete examples from our experiences on research teams that span decades and institutions.