 With her Purdue Industrial Engineering degree and ROTC training, Teresa Carter's career took off. Now retired from the Air Force as a two-star general, she returned recently as guest speaker for Purdue commencement. I am Teresa Carter. I retired from the Air Force in 2016 as a major general after having the honor and privilege of serving for 31 years on active duty. I'm now a board member, consultant, and student studying for my doctorate in business administration at Drexel University. I picked Purdue's sight unseen because it had a great computer science program and I could use my Air Force ROTC scholarship. Purdue became my family, literally and figuratively. So I switched to industrial engineering when I learned human factors engineers were involved in ergonomics and cockpit design. Well the Air Force had other ideas and shortly before graduation I was assigned at the civil engineering career field. The giant leap that Purdue afforded me the opportunity to make was to become the first female officer in my career field promoted to one-star general and ultimately to receive a second star. In June 2013 I became the 24th person and the first woman to have the honor of serving as the Air Force civil engineer, the highest ranking person in my career field. Yet seven months later, the four-star general leading the Air Force, he asked me to lead a merger which would take people, resources, and authority, consolidate them into a single organization supporting 80 bases around the world and do it with roughly 40% of the 900 people currently doing that work. It would be the largest reorganization the Air Force had undertaken in over 20 years. I don't think I could have done that without the foundation that Purdue provided in terms of looking at a problem and analyzing that problem. I'm hopeful that the path that I blazed and the footprints that I have left behind will show other women who aspire to lead and succeed that anything is possible. I hope that is my legacy that I can look back and say I counted when I needed to, I stood for something, and I made a difference.