The QA role has changed significantly over the last few years, and it is now common practice to think of a QA as a coach. In this new light, QAs help prevent issues by working with the mindsets of developers early in the development phase, in order to introduce quality focused tasks in developers' everyday activities.
However, just being a task-coach is just the tip of the iceberg. Creating awareness and developing testing skills for teams that are continuously in flux, due to growth and scope expansion, is only part of the job.
The QA should continuously challenge the team to address misalignments, misunderstandings, unresolved conflicts, and ineffective process habits which could potentially result in bugs in production.