Robert Barker/Cornell University Photography

Diana Daniels talks about the Presidential Search Committee, which she chairs, Aug. 30 in the Statler Hotel.

On the friendly fields of strife known as children's soccer, one of the most stressful positions anyone can play is mother of the goalie.

Diana Daniels is one such soccer mom. She's also chair of Cornell University's Presidential Search Committee, and vice chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees, positions that likewise come with their own tensions.

Daniels (A.B. '71, Cornell; J.D. '74, Harvard; M.C.P. '74, M.I.T.) is vice president, general counsel and secretary of the Washington Post Co. She is a single mother of two daughters adopted from China -- Dana, 10, and Daphne, 6. Spending time with the kids is her favorite form of relaxation -- even when it means watching Dana put herself on the line in goal. In fact, Daniels considers it a welcome diversion from her worldly preoccupations.

"I sit there and get totally engrossed in what is going on," she said. "For the time I'm there, I don't think about anything else."

And, as anyone who has perused her profile on the search committee Web site, Daniels has a lot to think about -- see http://www.cornell.edu/presidentsearch/.

She's also an avid fly fisher -- an activity that puts her in a state of rapt absorption. Every summer she takes a trip back to her home state of Montana to fly fish in Big Hole or the Ruby River. It's a sport with transferable skills -- applicable say, to chairing a search committee to find Cornell's next president.

Born in Dillon, Mont., Daniels came to Cornell in 1967 without a clear sense of what she wanted to do. Among the very first students in Cornell's College Scholar program, she designed what would become a city and regional planning degree.

"That is one of the great things about Cornell," she said. "I was able to pick and choose from a lot of courses in many different disciplines … I think if I had been at Harvard or Yale that would not have been the case."

She secured a fellowship in her senior year working in city government in New York City under Mayor John Lindsay. It was there she realized that many of the people making policy decisions were not planners, but lawyers. Daniels then earned both a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School and a master's degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974. To top it off, she also received a diploma from the University of Edinburgh in 1976.

Her goal was to go into teaching -- after getting some genuine legal experience. So she started at the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City, working with major clients in high finance.

Then came an offer she couldn't refuse.

"The Washington Post was seeking an assistant counsel, and they wanted to bring in a woman," she says. Daniels got the job. In less than a year, she became general counsel of Newsweek, which is owned by the Post. It was 1979. She was 30 years old.

While Daniels has been portrayed as defying the glass ceiling, she insists this has not been the case. Her biggest challenge at the Post and Newsweek was "winning the respect and the trust of the journalists" -- not because she was a woman-- "but because I was young and inexperienced," she says. But she won her place.

Today she oversees the legal affairs of a diverse and decentralized corporate entity that employs 28 lawyers.

As her career has grown, so, too, has her interest in her alma mater. In 1992 Daniels became a member of the President's Council of Cornell Women (PCCW), established in 1990 with the mission of advancing the involvement and leadership of women students, faculty, staff and alumnae within Cornell and throughout its many constituent communities. The group's founders are Lilyan Affinito '53 and Patricia Carry Stewart '50. Both are presidential councillors, trustees emeritae and members of the Cornell University Council.

"Lilyan and Patricia showed great foresight in forming the council," says Daniels. "PCCW has been a great vehicle for bringing qualified alumnae into leadership positions in the university's government structure and accounts for much of the growth of women on the board of trustees. It is really the reason I was able to reconnect to Cornell."

Reconnecting, in her case, may be an understatement.

Daniels has been a member of the Cornell Board of Trustees since 1995. In 2004 she began serving as vice chair of the board. In addition to chairing the search committee, she currently chairs the Committee on Board Membership and she serves on the Alumni Affairs Steering Committee of the Alumni Affairs and Development Committee, and she has chaired the Audit Committee. She was a member of the Academic Affairs and Campus Life Committees, the Presidential Search Committee that elected Cornell's 11th president, the Trustee Special Advisory Committee on Distance Learning and the Trustee Task Force on Admissions and Financial Aid … the list goes on.

Her other commitments include serving as a trustee of the Appleseed Foundation, an organization that taps into the talents of lawyers who then tackle social justice issues at the grassroots level in communities across the country.

Daniels didn't bring her fly rod along with her on her recent trip to Ithaca last week, although she would have welcomed the chance to work a few local fishing holes. Instead, following an interview for this article, Daniels attended several committee feedback forums marked for their passion.

The search committee's faculty forum was particularly charged -- and productive.

"I am chairing a search committee," she said, emphasizing "search" with a nod to the elusive future. "We have to look ahead."

Interim President Hunter R. Rawlings has described the search as being on the fast track. Daniels clarified that "fast track" means the search got off to a quick start once Lehman's resignation was imminent -- but there are no short cuts.

"We have the luxury of having Hunter's generous offer of acting as president until we've found the right candidate," Daniels said. "That's a tremendous burden off the search committee, so now we feel we have the freedom to really conduct a thorough search for the best candidate to produce a president worthy of Cornell." In the meantime, Daniels will continue to guide the search committee with a steady hand, with weekend trips to the soccer fields where she will root, hoot, agonize and generally decompress.