Rye Barcott

Rye Barcott is a social entrepreneur and author. Currently he works in the office of the Chairman and CEO at Duke Energy. Previously, Rye worked with McColl Partners, a middle-market investment bank in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Amyris biotechnologies, a Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield, & Byers advanced biofuels company in Emeryville, CA. He also served five years as a Marine.

While an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001, Rye co-founded Carolina For Kibera in Kenya. Named a Time Magazine and Gates Foundation “Hero of Global Health,” Carolina For Kibera fights poverty
and promotes ethnic and religious reconciliation through a unique model of participatory development.

While serving on active duty as a Marine in Iraq, Bosnia, and the Horn of Africa, he and his Kenyan co-founders, Salim Mohamed and Tabitha Festo, built an organization that today creates opportunities for thousands of talented young people born into abject poverty.

Rye serves on the Carolina For Kibera Board of Directors, the IDB Board of Directors, and the World Learning Board of Trustees. He is a TED University Speaker and TED Fellow. His first book, It Happened On The Way to War: A Marine’s Path to Peace, will be released by Bloomsbury in April 2011.

Rye holds a MPA and MBA from Harvard University, where he was a Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow, George Leadership Fellow, and member of the Harvard Endowment’s Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. He holds a BA in Peace, War, and Defense from UNC-Chapel Hill.