Laura Skandera Trombley , is Southwestern University’s 16th President. She is the first woman chosen to lead Texas’s first university. Recognized by her peers as a champion of liberal-arts institutions, Trombley’s leadership has earned praise for her ability to raise sustainability awareness, establish best-in-class university operations, and drive exponential growth in fundraising. Trombley is a preeminent Mark Twain scholar. As a graduate student, Trombley was the first scholar to examine and catalog the largest cache of Mark Twain letters to date. The unprecedented trove of 100 letters became the primary resource for her doctoral thesis and ultimately her first book, Mark Twain in the Company of Women, which Choice selected as one of the outstanding academic books of 1995. The discovery also solidified her reputation as a preeminent Twain scholar. Her most recent book is Mark Twain’s Other Woman (Knopf, 2011). Trombley earned her BA and MA in English from Pepperdine University graduating summa cum laude. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Southern California