Inspiring West Virginians

Homer Hickam Jr is best known for his 1998 memoir, Rocket Boys, the story of six teenagers in a 1950s West Virginia coal company town who went on to win the National Science Fair in 1960. The book, which was a #1 New York Times Best Seller, quickly became a classic and spawned the 1999 film October Sky. The story of these McDowell County youngsters has inspired millions of people around the world to pursue their dreams. In this profile, Hickam talks about what happened after he grew up, including his career at NASA and how he transitioned into becoming a full-time author.

Using light, Linda Powers and her team develop technology to enable people working in remote areas to detect microbes on surfaces, contamination in water, bioterrorism agents or disease organisms. They are also developing simple devices to detect HIV, malaria and TB in the field. This is the story of a little girl growing up in West Virginia, a science nerd with few role models, who nevertheless went on to be among the top five in the nation to win the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Today she is a bioengineer at the University of Arizona as well as mentor and role model to many women in science, engineering and technology.

Intuit, maker of QuickBooks, TurboTax and Mint, is one of the most admired software companies in the world, and its leader grew up in a small town in West Virginia. This profile chronicles CEO Brad Smith's younger years, and the lessons he learned from a West Virginia upbringing. It also includes interviews with colleagues and family.

This is the inspiring story of a cutting edge heart surgeon who grew up the son of an African-American coal miner in the one of the poorest regions of West Virginia. The youngest of 11 children, as a child Cousins promised himself that when he grew up, he would return to his roots to help others with health problems similar to his father's. After receiving a top class medical education, that's exactly what he did.