Another was a personal triumph. At 7:15 a.m. on Sunday, March 7, 1999, Shalala went to an ATM near her Washington home in the tony Georgetown neighborhood. A man grabbed her and ordered her to "give it up." In a move she does not recommend to others, she instinctively yelled. She says she bent over to protect herself. The would-be robber, alarmed, jumped in a car and drove away. Shalala memorized the license plate and called the police, who made an arrest. At work, her staff applauded her. "The employees were tickled," she says.

Shalala regrets the missed opportunity to fix the nation's healthcare system but says now that perhaps no strategy would have worked. "Every issue has its timing. I don't think the issue was ripe. Sometimes systems have to collapse" before the public and leaders will back serious reform.

When she wrapped up her tenure at HHS, Shalala retained plenty of goodwill. Harvard Prof. Mary Jo Bane, who resigned rather than implement the bill that Clinton signed, still recalls Shalala with fondness. Shalala wasn't afraid to hire the smartest experts in every field and give them plenty of autonomy, Bane says. "She relied on us" to make decisions. "In Washington, people in authority will throw you to the wolves, but Donna never did that. If we made mistakes, she'd talk about it, but she would back you up," Bane says. "She was terrific to work for." Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who had been extremely critical of the Clintons' bungling of health insurance, says, "She did everything she could do under the circumstances . . . and left Washington with friends," a rare accomplishment.

She has turned those friends to good use at the University of Miami. After five years of serving on the board of Lennar Corp., Shalala just collected a whopping $100 million donation for the University of Miami's medical school from the family of the company founder. Her good relations with local politicians helped seal a land swap that will enable the university to build a new bioscience center. She has also embarked on building new student apartments to give the commuter-heavy campus more of a residential feel. But she insists that the new buildings will not be her main legacy. Rather, it will be an improved university, with better faculty and students. "I make institutions better," Shalala says. "That's what I do for a living."

BORN: Feb. 14, 1941 EDUCATION: A.B., Western College for Women; Ph.D., the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University FAMILY: Single; close to her twin sister's family GREATEST Pride: "I have done things other people didn't think were possible, like our children's immunization campaign."