Clara Leach Adams-Ender

Clara Adams-Ender ( Leach; born July 11, 1939) is a retired United States Army officer who served as Chief of the United States Army Nurse Corps from September 1987 to August 1991. She was the first woman to receive her master's degree in military arts and sciences from the United States Army Command and General Staff College. She is also the first African-American nurse corps officer to graduate from the United States Army War College. When she retired, in 1993, she was serving as commanding officer of Fort Belvoir, in Fairfax County, Virginia. After retirement, in 2001 she published a memoir, My Rise to the Stars: How a Sharecropper's Daughter Became an Army General.

Early life and education Clara Leach was born in Willow Spring, North Carolina, on July 11, 1939. She had nine siblings. Her mother was Caretha Bell (Sapp) Leach. Her father, Otha Leach, was a sharecropper and the family lived in Wake County, North Carolina, on a tobacco farm. Leach attended high school at Fuquay Springs Consolidated High School and graduated when she was sixteen, as second in her class. She attended North Carolina A&T State University, a historically black university. While there, she was a participant in the Greensboro sit-ins.

After retirement Adams-Ender retired from the army in 1993 and started a consulting company.

In the 2024 United States presidential election, Adams-Ender endorsed Kamala Harris.

Honors In 1996, she was named one of Working Woman magazine's 350 women who "changed the world." She is a recipient of the Army Distinguished Service Medal with one oak leaf cluster, Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters, and an Army Commendation Medal.

Adams-Ender also received the Roy Wilkins Meritorious Service Award and the Gertrude E. Rush Award for Leadership.

Adams-Ender is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.