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Elizabeth Fetter’s resume is littered with accolades. In 2021, she won a regional cross-country meet representing Palo Alto High School, and as a junior in college she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa for academic excellence.
Now, she’s gearing up for her hardest assignment yet.
Fetter, a Palo Alto native, was recently selected as the first captain at West Point, the highest-ranking member in a corps of 4,400 cadets. She is one of only three students from Palo Alto High School who have matriculated to a United States military service academy in the past three years.
Now, as the top-ranking cadet at West Point – which is also called brigade commander – Fetter will help maintain the overall development and discipline of the entire corps of cadets.
“It’s not so much that I, as a senior cadet, am giving these commands or these orders down,” Fetter explained. “It’s about this idea of initiative. What is the friction in your unit? What do you see as a gap? And then, what resources do you need from me to help you solve that gap?”
John Bungarden, Fetter’s former high school social studies teacher and a retired ROTC officer in the Army, called Fetter’s selection a “remarkable achievement.”
“First captain, that’s beyond impressive,” he said.
West Point, also called the United States Military Academy, is one of five service academies that feed into the military branches. Cadets at West Point, who must obtain a nomination from a member of Congress to gain admission, become commissioned officers in the Army after graduation.
The school’s corps system is modeled after the operations hierarchy of the Army. Cadets gain more responsibility as they become older and more experienced leaders. Freshman are called plebes, and they learn the customs of the Army, such as saluting to older, higher-ranked cadets and marching. Sophomores are called cadet corporals and oversee a single plebe. Juniors, called cadet sergeants, oversee six people. Cadet lieutenants – seniors – are in charge of a platoon of 30 people.
Similar to a student body president, the first captain is not necessarily the cadet with the highest GPA – though Fetter was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa as a junior— but on the basis of their leadership skills, academic excellence, fitness and character. The brigade’s top leadership positions are a team of 10 cadets, with Fetter at the helm, and are selected by West Point’s officers and other cadets.
For Fetter, serving as first captain is an exercise in “servant leadership” — a style of leadership centered on putting the corps first, an approach that resonated with her after reading James C. Hunter’s book “The Servant.”
“This position does not care about my preferences. It cares about what the corp needs,” she said. “It’s really about how I can serve others and be the best leader that the Corps needs.”
Fetter has cultivated the concept of servant leadership at West Point. During her first year, Fetter said, she felt focused on herself: on getting the land navigation score, getting the best grades or learning how to greet other cadets.
“I didn’t have that team-oriented mindset, and so I basically was just in the training with that wrong attitude,” she said.
That mindset began to shift, Fetter said, during a nine-day summer field exercise after her plebe year. The exercise is called Cadet Field Training, and is an opportunity for cadets to practice missions, tactical leadership and battle drills.
“If you’re not a team player, the mission will not be accomplished. You need everyone in that unit working towards the end goal,” Fetter said.
Fetter is seemingly her own worst critic: people who knew her before West Point said she possessed a maturity and self-assuredness beyond her years. Bungarden, her retired teacher, described her as smart, clear-spoken and inquisitive in high school.
“She is remarkably capable and competent, and quietly so. She’s not flashy,” Bungarden said. “She was thoughtful, and she seemed sensitive to the folks around her.”
Fetter, who graduated from Paly in 2023 as a stand-out cross-country and track athlete and swimmer, was recruited to run at West Point. Michael Davidson, Paly’s cross-country and track and field coach, described Fetter as warm, kind and resilient.
“From the beginning, Elizabeth was a little bit of a different person,” Davidson. “She showed leadership qualities early on.”
Fetter does not come from a military family, but her parents emphasized community and service growing up. Bungarden was the person who encouraged Fetter in high school to consider West Point, and Fetter was intrigued by the school’s values. A high school visit to the campus clinched her commitment to West Point. Visiting for the first time, she woke up at 5 a.m. to attend a workout with the team. In the pre-dawn hours, the entire school was awake.
“I knew, this is a place that I want to be,” Fetter said, recalling the visit. “This is a place that values fitness. This is a place that values community. This is a place that values doing hard things together.”
As West Point’s incoming first captain, Fetter will lead a corps in which women remain a minority, at about 22% of the corps. She is the ninth female first captain at West Point in the 150-year history of the position; the first woman was elevated to the top position in 1990.
Her selection as first captain also comes amid the backdrop of defense secretary Pete Hegseth blocking promotions for high-ranking women in the military. The percentage of women nominated to high-ranking positions in the military has dropped to a two-decade low.
Speaking only for herself — not for women in the military broadly — Fetter said she doesn’t think much about her gender. Take pull-ups, for example: For years, she thought she wasn’t capable of doing them. But after taking a gymnastics class at West Point, she was able to do six. Her experience as a woman at the male-dominated school, she said, has been entirely positive.
“Any job I have, or any mission I want to accomplish, if I think about it in gendered terms, then my ability to accomplish that mission becomes out of my control,” she says. “What can Elizabeth do as herself to accomplish this goal?”
After her service as first captain this academic year, Fetter, who studies history, will be commissioned into the Army with the rank of second lieutenant. She will then have a five-year commitment as an officer, with three additional years in the reserves.
Looking back on her hometown, Fetter sees a shared emphasis on hard work, dedication and service between Palo Alto and West Point, even if those values manifest differently in each community. She hopes that more Palo Alto students will consider careers in military service.
“My hope is that more young people from the Bay Area will see West Point and the other service academies – and just service to the nation in general – as a path that brings so much purpose and drive and motivation and community to their lives,” she said. “It’s genuinely been an experience that’s changed my life for the better.”
Correction: The initial version of this story inaccurately listed her as a winner of an award for which she was a finalist.
