Kimberly Colloton gets her new major's rank insignia from Capt. Liz Moss, British Royal Engineer and COL. Richard Thompson

Airborne (39 parachute jumps). Company commander (27th Engineering Battalion, Fort Bragg). Overseas assignment (Taegu, S. Korea). Bachelor’s degree in architecture (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Master’s in civil and environmental engineering (Stanford University).

And, since late August, promoted to major from captain as the District’s area commander for the High Desert.—the National Training Center (NTC), Edwards AFB and Vandenberg AFB. In that role, she’s helping transform the District’s managerial culture and structure “to a matrix from a stovepipe” through new area support teams.

Sometimes, since there are so few greensuits visible among the hundreds of District team members, it’s natural to emphasize civilian customers and stakeholders. But Maj. Colloton’s mission is to make sure that the military folks at bases throughout the District get the same care and feeding as their civilian counterparts. “We want to work with them to keep them as our customers,” she explains. “We want to show them we’re concerned about their troops.”

One issue close to both her head and heart is affordable housing for military families. While at Stanford, she joined a team studying how best to provide such housing for Bay Area public employees and others; that team’s study competed with strategies from the University of California at Berkeley, UC Davis and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Colloton also examined how Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit, used “sweat equity” in places like Redwood City to ensure that residents became stakeholders in their new homes. “I want to look at new housing for NTC,” she says. “Maybe to privatize some of the base housing to make it so soldiers get quality housing.”

The 10-year Army officer, who came to L.A. in July from the Stanford campus, clearly represents a recruiting poster for the modern Pentagon. She’s smart, well-spoken, tough and compassionate. At her last three duty stations, she was got enviable officer efficiency reports (which she asks not to be disclosed, showing that she’s at once modest and a team player.) Despite all the entries on her bio—or maybe because of them—the Albany, N.Y., native remains humble and low-key. Being promoted to major marks “the transformation into a grown-up world,” she jokes, downplaying her 76-line, two-page resume.

“Working in the District is such an important part of the Corps of Engineers,” she says. “Everyone you work with out in the field expects you to know everything—from demolitions to contracts. Not a lot of my peers are able to get these experiences at a district because there are only a few slots for active military officers.”

Although her younger brother is a captain in Special Forces, Colloton didn’t have a military molecule in her DNA. She decided to pursue a ROTC scholarship to help her get through the five-year architecture curriculum at Rensselaer, one of the most highly regarded scientific and technical institutions on the east coast. “I decided to try it for a year,” she recalls. “By graduation I was sure I wanted to go active duty for four years. Since then, I just decided I liked it.”

Her decade of assignments has included three years at Fort Hood, Tex., in platoon, company and battalion roles, managing a $25 million public works budget in South Korea and two slots at the 27th Engineering Battalion. The latter unit was highly active in the Persian Gulf War, both in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, where six of its soldiers were killed in a freak explosion at an Iraqi airfield. Colloton says there’s a memorial plaque for them outside the 27th’s dining hall at Bragg.

Possibly the toughest gig yet for her was qualifying as a jumpmaster. “That’s one of the most stressful things I’ve been through,” she admits. “But you have to pass if you want to command. I can’t participate if I can’t lead troops out of planes. That was one of my more pressured moments.”

At the 27th, she was the first woman to hold down company commander and logistical officer posts. For females, the Army “isn’t 50-50 yet,” she says. “It’s probably 10%. But over time it will get better. We take small steps. Everybody has treated me equally and given me opportunities to excel. I’ve never felt held back or limited. I’ve been fortunate to have bosses who let me go out and do good things.”

In 2004 the bespectacled officer is scheduled to attend the Command General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. After that she hopes to be a battalion executive officer or operations officer somewhere.

When you meet Colloton, you forget the slogans. Be all that you can be. An Army of one. Instead, you have the clear and present notion that this woman could someday make general. “That would be completely gravy,” she says, wide-eyed. “I wouldn’t turn it down, but you never know. Right now I’m just taking it one day, one mission, at a time.”

And succeeding.