If anything, stories like Ms. Portman's show that great success, like DNA, is constructed of a few basic building blocks: tenacity, focus, and the old Woody Allen line about just showing up.

One year, to get the study groups just-so, Ms. DeGraca laid out index CARDS with students' names and basic facts on her living room floor, mixing and matching until the groups seem balanced.

In the late 1970s, Ms. Maathai began the Green Belt movement to help poor women in rural communities meet their most basic needs.