Rye Barcott co-founded the non-governmental organization Carolina for Kibera (CFK) with Salim Mohamed and Tabitha Atieno Festo while he was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill earning his B.A. in Peace, War, and Defense. CFK develops leaders in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya through its model of participatory development.  After graduation, Barcott served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 5 years in Iraq, Bosnia, and the Horn of Africa. He then earned master's degrees in business and public administration from Harvard University, where he was a Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow and a member of the HarvardEndowment's Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. In 2006, ABC World News named then Captain Barcott a ‘Person of the Year' for his dual service to Kibera and the Marine Corps. In 2009, he joined the inaugural class of TED Fellows. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and daughter and works in the Sustainability Office at Duke Energy.  His first book, It Happened on the Way to War, was published by Bloomsbury in Spring 2011 to coincide with the 10th Anniversary of CFK.