Claudine Gay

For 387 years, no Black person ever ran the illustrious Harvard University until Claudine Gay assumed office as the school's 30th president. The Haitian-American is the first Black president since the school was founded in 1636. The political scientist is no stranger to Harvard's campus: she was recruited as a professor of government in 2006 and later served as the dean of social sciences and then the Harvard's Edgerley Family Dean of Arts and Sciences. Outside of Harvard's walls, she explores the ongoing racial issues in the country as a political scholar and founding chair of the Inequality in America Initiative.