A psychologist from Philadelphia. An expert in romance languages from a small rural town in eastern Texas. A Toronto-born molecular biologist.
While their backgrounds and interests may be worlds apart, these three women share a common bond.
Judith Rodin, Ruth Simmons and Shirley Tilghman are each female presidents in the traditionally good-ol' boys club that is the Ivy League.
But their journey has been a long one. Rodin was named Penn's president in 1994 and became the first female to preside over an Ivy, 118 years after women enrolled in Penn classes for the first time. In 2001, two more pioneering females followed suit, as Tilghman became Princeton's president and Simmons took the top position at Brown.
In addition to sharing the burden and prestige of holding such high positions, the three trailblazers share a love for learning that started early.
Simmons, an African American who grew up on a farm without pencils or paper and "came from severely deprived economic circumstances," says going to school was "like being in a candy store."
"In the world that I came from, manual labor was the most highly valued enterprise," she continues. "Reading and thinking were considered the pursuits of lazy and unmotivated people. [The classroom] validated my proclivity to lead a more interior life as a young person."
But while her parents felt that intellectual pursuits paled in comparison to milking and harvesting, the academic community clearly begged to differ.
Tilghman, too, developed a passion for learning early on.
"When I was very little, I thought I wanted to be a mathematician," she says. "I loved numbers. I loved math."
Math led to science and science led to some cutting edge research in genetics, as Tilghman quickly became a pioneer in her field of molecular biology and even participated in cloning the first mammalian gene at the National Institutes of Health.
Rodin, whose mother and close female relatives were all homemakers, also found her niche once she hit elementary school.
"I loved my teachers in elementary school," she says. "They were women, and they were great role models and that was what I envisioned as a career.
"It was all little girls ever thought to be in my generation," she remembers. "There were so few role models for little girls to be anything but teachers and nurses."
With even fewer role models, Simmons says she saw going to college and getting an office job as the best possible scenario.
"I grew up at a time when African Americans didn't really think about careers because we didn't have access to education," she says, adding that because her parents were laborers, it did not occur to her to aim for the white-collar workforce.
But with more dreams than role models, these women took their educations into their own hands and, often surprising their families, continued on to graduate school.
"I think because of my background, most of my family didn't particularly understand the value of the path that I had chosen," Simmons says. "I think they thought... that there were more important things I could have done."
Rodin's family responded similarly to her decision to pursue graduate school.
"My mother was slightly perplexed at my decision to go to graduate school," she says. "Going to college, of course, was wonderful and obvious."
Still, Rodin knew graduate school was her destiny all along, especially because her Penn adviser encouraged her profusely.
"He made me believe I could have any career," she says. "I vacillated between psych grad school and law school, but it was never a question of if."
With only the when and where up for debate, she says that it was her self-confidence, love for learning and "having a sense that my ideas were interesting and original" that gave her the needed push to continue on with graduate school, even though she was the only woman in her program after her one female partner in crime dropped out.
"There was a lot of uncertainty about whether women had the staying power," she says. "I think we felt we had to prove the skeptics wrong, and I did my part."
While Rodin's confidence drove her to academic life, Tilghman says her passion for teaching led her to higher education.
"When I had left [the] university, I taught for two years in West Africa, and it was during those two years that I realized I loved teaching," Tilghman says. "I like the experience of teaching. I was good at it, which is important."
These all-body consuming passions drove the three women to excel in graduate school and then to become full-time academics.
In fact, Rodin says her Penn undergraduate experience was a major force behind that decision.
"Life here really opened every world to me," she says. "The world had changed by the time I was 21."
Simmons, too, found her passion during her college years at Dillard University and credits her decision to continue her studies with her discovery of the romance languages.
Of course, opportunities like a Fulbright scholarship also encouraged and enabled her to continue down the expensive path to academia, she says.
However, she says that her early school years, rife with kind and encouraging teachers, inspired her to want to become an educator.
"I don't think my experience in college and grad school would have encouraged me to pursue that profession because in the early days of integration, graduate school wasn't a very friendly place," she says, adding that her hostile experience motivated her to try to make academia a friendlier place, especially for women and minorities.
"Because of some of the difficulties I have had in my career as an African American and a female, that motivates me to want to respond differently to people who are coming up in the profession," she explains. "I know what it's like to be in a class where you're the only one who is different."
"I know how impoverished the curriculum can be when the course of study or curriculum really has no diversity in it," she says, recalling graduate school classes where professors refused to speak to her.
Yet, she, like Rodin and Tilghman, found her work exciting.
Still, all three agree that they had to face one major obstacle -- juggling work and family.
"I do think that there is one critical issue that makes it harder for women than for men to be in any profession, including academia, and that is the issue of balancing family and work," Tilghman says.
Rodin agrees, saying, "In my head, I dropped out 40 times in my four years of graduate school."
But 40 times she came back. As hard as it was, the right skills and determination allowed these women to flourish.
"I am very good at keeping parts of my life separate from one another, and I've trained myself not to feel guilty, which is probably the biggest and most important quality," says Tilghman, now a single mother.
And while taking presidential posts did little to ease the workload, the three were thrilled by the opportunities that came with the job.
Rodin's inauguration "was the most amazing feeling and the most amazing day of my life, except having my son," she says.
She had had other "presidential feelers" before being approached by Penn, but accepted the red and blue offer because of her connection with the University.
"I was coming home in every way" the Philly native and Penn alumna explains. "It was a very unusual and special feeling that I don't think the others could have had."
Simmons, who had been president of Smith College before accepting the position at Brown, says that it was the idea of leading a large research university that lured her to Brown.
To mark her transition, Simmons asked Rodin to speak at her inauguration.
"I was very proud of what she had accomplished, and it was particularly meaningful for me to have her here," Simmons says.
Tilghman attended the ceremony as well and says she was glad to be there and glad that both Rodin and Simmons attended her own inauguration.
This was especially true since Tilghman has been an "enormous admirer" of Simmons ever since Simmons' early teaching days.
"She had such good judgment and knew how to get things done," Tilghman says. "She was just a very wise person who was enormously clear-thinking, and she didn't tolerate people who were there to give speeches rather than to get work done. I admired that a lot."
Even after their inaugurations, the three women have stayed close, talking regularly and lending each other support.
"I've tried really to give them advice, and they've both sought it," Rodin says.
In addition, she says that after years of being the only female Ivy League president, she is relieved to have more female blood among her peers.
"It's also great to have two other women in the room when the Ivy presidents meet," Rodin says, adding that she noticed her gender more when she was the only one.
"It had been a long time in my professional life since I was the only woman in the room," she says. "In the beginning of my career that was the case, but for most of my career, it wasn't. So, to come back into forums where again I was the only woman in the room was bizarre and I began to think of myself as the woman president again."
In fact, instead of seeing their gender as a setback, all three women forged ahead.
"I think the more substantive thing that I have done is to have the opportunity to hire some extraordinarily talented women to senior positions at the University," Tilghman says of her recent appointment of several female deans.
In addition to hiring a number of new senior administrators, giving the university a "new beginning," she also enjoys doing "little things, like in someone's day."
"It can be something as simple as sending an e-mail to someone to thank them for doing a great job at something," she says, adding that giving students special opportunities is another favorite part of her job.
"Last year, I was able to free up funds so that students could practice their language acquisition," Tilghman says, explaining that she sent 12 students to study in the Czech Republic last summer.
Simmons says that being a female African American has contributed to her desire to share her views with students, both explicitly or just by showing up at their events.
"It's letting a student group or a group on campus know that you actually care about them," Simmons says. "Sometimes that's the moral value that you're teaching."
But according to Rodin, both her gender and psychology training make her a better listener and mentor.
"It was my first impulse after Sept. 11 to write to your parents," she says. "Many things like that come both because I am a woman and the parent of a college-aged student."
While she expected to work hard and make important decisions, positive feedback from the community has been one of the best, most surprising aspects of her job.
Just two weeks ago, she was getting off a train from New York City when a woman next to her asked her if she was Judith Rodin.
"I said, 'Yes,' and she said, 'Oh, I admire you so much,'" Rodin recalls. "And I said, 'You know who I am?' and she said, 'Of course.'"
After 200 years of men monopolizing the position of Ivy League president, women are not only sitting in the top seat at three Ivies, but their accomplishments are truly getting noticed.
