That Clara Adams-Ender would make something of herself was never a question. Her parents saw to that. But just how far she would go, they could never have imagined. Born one of 10 children to sharecropping parents near Raleigh, North Carolina, Adams-Ender's hard work helped her use an Army nursing scholarship to finish college, become chief nurse of the US Army Nurse corps in charge of 22,000 nurses worldwide, and become the first nurse in Army history to become commanding general of a base, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

Along the way, Adams-Ender overcame poverty, race, and gender issues, and today runs her own management consulting firm based on her philosophy of caring about people. She describes her strategies for going under, over, around, or through obstacles but never letting them stop her from meeting her personal and professional goals.

Adams-Ender has just written her autobiography, My Rise to the Stars: How a Sharecropper's Daughter Became an Army General. Next, she intends to write about leadership and "the positive things people can do to keep themselves going from day to day." I'm trying to help make people stars, she says. "Not everyone can be a general, but everyone can be a star if you care about yourself and make sure you are dealing with folks with dignity and respect.