In this article, the author profiles Drew Gilpin Faust, a career academic who has risen to the top job at Harvard University and has been named president of Harvard after six years as leader of its small Radcliffe Institute. Ms. Faust, who is 59, grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, raised by a father who bred Thoroughbred horses and a mother who advised her to marry well and never expressed high hopes for her daughter's career. People who know Ms. Faust describe her foremost as a first-rate scholar. Her background as a historian is shared by only two of the 27 men who have led Harvard since it opened, in 1636. Her finely tuned people skills--her willingness to listen and reach out to newcomers--have earned her the respect of her colleagues as well as of high-placed university officials in the three decades she has spent in higher education.