Whole-cell models that predict phenotype from genotype are needed to advance biology, bioengineering, and medicine. Achieving whole-cell models will require extensive collaboration among modelers, experimentalists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and software engineers. In April 2016, we organized the first Whole-Cell Modeling Summer School to begin to build a whole-cell community by training new researchers. The school created the first whole-cell training materials; trained 21 graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty; and generated ideas about how to better teach whole-cell modeling. To build a whole-cell modeling community, we plan to continue to organize schools, continue to improve these schools based on the lessons that we learned this year, and initiate an annual workshop and/or online seminar series to facilitate sustained discussion about whole-cell modeling.