How do you get from a sharecroppers' shack to the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company? By believing that you're in control of your fate, and by accepting help from influential schoolteachers, according to a 15-year study of pathmakers--people who overcame staggering socioeconomic odds to achieve career success.

The study, described in Paths to Success (Harvard University Press), compared 60 pathmakers to 40 similarly successful people from privileged families. The pathmakers not only proved to be more self-motivated and open to assistance, they were also more likely to take advantage of any career opportunity, to leave jobs for better paying ones, to create jobs, and to turn failures into positive outcomes.

But a meteoric rise seems to have its costs. Pathmakers were more likely than their counterparts from wealthy families to worry about the future and to be reformed drinkers or smokers; they were less likely to marry and to maintain contact with their families. Despite these factors, pathmakers tended to be more altruistic. Black female pathmakers, who suffered the most familial and marital alienation, were most altruistic of all.

Study co-author Charles Harrington, Ph.D., sees the findings as a testament to the pathmakers' skill in utilizing social resources. The path to success works like a spiral, Harrington says. A teacher or mentor allows a student to get a foothold on an ascending path, and the student begins to build momentum, spiraling up to the highest rungs of achievement.