Being a female administrator was relatively rare when R. Barbara Gitenstein rose to the highest level of academia in 1999, becoming the first woman and first Jewish president of The College of New Jersey, a position she held until 2018. Now a consultant for institutions of higher education, she draws upon valuable lessons she learned across more than four decades in academia — plus personal and historical obstacles she overcame — to help today’s college administrators find solutions to modern-day challenges. Gitenstein chronicles her path to the presidency and acknowledges the impact that people, places and perceptions had on her personal and professional identities. She is the author of some 30 academic articles on Jewish-American Literature and academic administration as well as the monograph Apocalyptic Messianism and Jewish-American Poetry.