Clara Adams-Ender, Michael Illbruck, and William Pedersen are among the University of Minnesota’s most accomplished graduates. “I’d be nowhere without the school of architecture at the University of Minnesota. I’m extremely proud to have graduated from there.” says Pedersen, design principal with the New York architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. Adams-Ender, a nursing graduate, was one of the highest-ranking African-American women ever in the military. “I remember the school fondly, and I believe in its ideals and ideas,” she says. Illbruck, a successful business executive committed to world-class sailing, says earning two U of M degrees was “among the most important experiences in my life.”

Sailing is a passion for Michael Illbruck, whose firm sponsors the leading boat in a currant around-the-world race. —Photo courtesy of Illbruck Challenge

Michael Illbruck (B.S.B. ’85, M.B.A. ’87)
By 2006, Michael Illbruck hopes people worldwide will know the Illbruck name. His Munich-based company, illbruck, sponsors the illbruck Challenge yacht-racing team, the early leader of the 32,700-mile, around-the-world Volvo Ocean Race. The illbruck Challenge’s next goal is to compete for America’s Cup in 2002–03 and then go on to actually win the cup in 2006.

The Illbruck family company began in 1952 in a plant near the Rhine River outside Cologne. In 1976 illbruck USA, Inc., opened in Minneapolis. “It was obvious then that I would go to Minnesota to attend college,” Illbruck says. “[The U] set the foundation to explore and venture into the business world and also influenced my private life, because the job I have is no job; it’s part of my life.”

The firm now has four major divisions turning out automotive, building, and other products. It employs more than 3,000 people in 15 countries on four continents. In 2000, illbruck reported revenues of more than $300 million.

Michael’s father, Willi, began the firm and the family’s passion for sailing. Just as Michael has taken illbruck to new heights, so has he taken the commitment to boating to unprecedented levels. The illbruck Challenge is illbruck’s primary corporate publicity effort, has an annual budget of several million dollars, and has assembled an international team of sailors, boatbuilders, and researchers. Illbruck sees his commitment to sailing as compatible with the business. “Everything that happens on a race boat happens in a company,” he explains. “You have teamwork, clear decisions, a constantly changing environment, tough competition. [You have to] stay on your toes all the time, be flexible, and be environmentally safe.”

Illbruck has turned the day-to-day running of the illbruck Challenge over to others, but still takes a keen interest. He met the team as it arrived in Capetown, South Africa, and in Sydney, Australia, after winning the first two legs of the nine-stage Volvo Ocean Race. The race continues into June, with stops in Miami in April and Baltimore in May.

Clara Adams-Ender's positive spirit and hard-working nature made her one of the highest ranking African-American women in U.S. Army history. —Photo by Tom Foley

Clara Adams-Ender (M.S. ’69)
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 and become a brigadier general. By the time she retired in 1993, she had led the Army Nursing Corps and commanded Fort Belvoir in Virginia.

Adams-Ender took to military nursing as soon as she earned her officer commission. “You get a real deep sense of doing something important,” she says. Although there was extra pressure to prove herself in the Army culture, she didn’t let it bother her. “My own expectations for myself were so much greater than anyone else’s that I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on around me.”

When she came to Minnesota to pursue her master’s in nursing, Adams-Ender encountered a kind of racism that surprised her. She arrived in 1967, a time of urban race riots. “When I got to Minnesota, people were up in arms,” she says. “Many people had never seen an African-American person in their lives, but most had their opinions and most of them were bad.” With a priest from St. Lawrence parish, she traveled around the area “holding little sensitivity sessions. We did a lot in terms of enlightening people,” she recalls. “I really did not realize the depth of hatred based on ignorance that existed. It was a very illuminating experience for me.”

Adams-Ender has just written her autobiography, My Rise to the Stars: How a Sharecropper’s Daughter Became an Army General, and is now running her own management consulting firm, CAPE (Caring About People with Enthusiasm) Associates, Inc. She intends to go on to write about leadership and “positive things people can do to keep themselves going from day to day… . With CAPE, I’m trying to help make people stars. 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.”

William Pederson believes that tall buildings can change the world for the better. —Photo by Sigrid Estrada

William Pedersen (B.S. ’61)
Even before September 11, William Pedersen, designer of some of the world’s most elegant and distinctive tall buildings, was thinking in new ways about the structures. “Tall buildings have the possibility of becoming power plants in themselves; the technology exists to generate wind and solar power to fuel a very large percentage of their needs,” he says. “What happened September 11 throws into sharp relief the importance of finding ways to conserve energy in this country. We’re extraordinarily vulnerable because of our dependence on imported oil. To my mind it is really a national emergency.” Buildings can be made safer by including more escape stairwells and fire-proof refuge floors with access to fresh air. Pedersen says nothing can be done to make buildings withstand airplane crashes and urges

Inset: The design of the Shanghai World Financial Center —Illustration courtesy Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

research on ways to keep planes away from buildings.

The St. Paul native and architect’s son admits he came to the U to play hockey. During his sophomore year, however, his elevation to varsity bumped up against rigorous architecture course work. “[My classes] took quite a beating that year; I was lucky I made it through,” he says. In Pedersen’s junior year, Professor Leonard Parker “became my mentor more than anybody else. He really got me fired up about architecture.”

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates was formed in 1976 and has been winning awards ever since. Among its hundreds of projects is the Shanghai World Financial Center, which may rise as high as 1,640 feet, making it the world’s tallest building. Construction was halted during the Asian financial crisis, but recently resumed. The simple, elegant design is in response to the visual chaos of buildings now rising around the construction site, as well as the Chinese idea of a square and a circle representing Earth and sky.

“I think we’re at a point where architecture is going to change fundamentally,” Pedersen says. “The tall building, to my mind, is going to be the most important development of the 21st century.” Because tall buildings can generate power, conserve energy, and allow maximum natural light inside while leaving more space for parks and truly natural areas, “the tall building… can be transformed into something consistent with nature,” he says.

get more info The University of Minnesota Alumni Association has a new Great Grads list. To see the list and perhaps nominate grads of your own, visit www.umaa.umn.edu.

get more info To become a member of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, visit www.umaa.umn.edu, e-mail umalumni@tc.umn.edu, or call 612-624-2323 or 1-800-UM-ALUMS (862-5867).