Rye Barcott
New York Times Bestselling Author, Marine & Social Entrepreneur
Rye Barcott
New York Times Bestselling Author, Marine & Social Entrepreneur
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Biography
Rye Barcott is a Marine Corps veteran, social entrepreneur, investor, and New York Times-bestselling author of Courage Can Save US. He speaks about courage—what it is, where it comes from, and why it is the quality leaders and organizations need most in an age of disruption and distrust. His message is grounded in an unusually wide range of experience: he has led Marines in combat, built organizations in business and philanthropy, invested in clean energy, and spent the last decade working to repair a polarized political system. Few speakers have worked credibly across worlds that so rarely intersect, and that range is what gives his message its authority.
Barcott is co-founder and CEO of With Honor, a cross-partisan organization that supports principled veteran leadership in public office. Since 2018, it has helped elect more than 200 veterans and national security professionals—including 50 now serving in Congress—and helped pass more than 200 bipartisan laws.
As a college student, he co-founded CFK Africa (formerly Carolina for Kibera), a locally led youth leadership and public health non-governmental organization headquartered in Nairobi's Kibera slum. The organization grew from a $26 grant into a hospital now treating more than 40,000 patients a year and a network of tens of thousands of young adults across dozens of African slum communities. His first book, It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace, juxtaposes humanitarian and military service in Kenya and Iraq. Following its publication, Dartmouth College awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.
A former TED Fellow, Barcott has spoken at venues ranging from the Gates Foundation and the Mayo Clinic to Amazon, J.P. Morgan, Walmart, and Target, as well as leading industry associations and international conferences, including the Munich Security Conference and the World Economic Forum.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in Peace, War, and Defense with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and master’s degrees from Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, where he studied under the late David Gergen, advisor to four U.S. presidents and later a co-founder of With Honor.
After graduate school, he served as the speechwriter and Special Advisor to the Chairman and CEO of Duke Energy, the late Jim Rogers, before partnering with a fellow Marine to co-found and lead Double Time Capital, an investment firm focused on solar power.
Recent speaking engagements include the Library of Congress, the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, Aspen Ideas Festival, BIO 2026, 92NY, and the London Defence Conference. Rye Barcott works in partnership with APB Speakers for speaking engagements worldwide.
Speaker Videos
Full Interview: With Honor co-founder Rye Barcott
Rye Barcott: "We want to advance more voluntary national service"
ABC World News: Persons of the Year Profile - Rye Barcott
Courage Can Save US
Speech Topics
Courage Can Save US
The signature keynote — leading with principle in an age of disruption and distrust.
Trust in institutions has eroded, division has seeped into workplaces and communities, and technology is reshaping how we work and what we believe. In that environment, Rye Barcott argues, the scarce and decisive quality in any leader is courage—and we routinely confuse it with something easier.
He draws a sharp line between bravery, action in the moment that can be selfless or self-serving, and courage, the deliberate choice to advance the common good despite real cost. The distinction, drawn from Stoic philosophy and the ideal of servant leadership, gives audiences a precise, usable framework rather than an abstraction.
From there he turns to where courage comes from. Across ten very different American lives—and his own work in business, philanthropy, and reform—three qualities recur as its foundation: integrity, humility, and commitment.
Barcott shows how those qualities translate directly into the challenges leaders face now: building trust across difference, holding to principle under pressure, navigating disagreement without being captured by it, and sustaining a mission-driven culture when the incentives reward outrage and self-promotion. The tone is hopeful but unsentimental—clear-eyed about how hard this is and convinced it remains within reach.
Themes for corporate and association audiences:
Resilience and principled decision-making under pressure
Building trust and leading through uncertainty
Navigating disagreement and tension inside an organization
Sustaining mission, meaning, and culture in a distracted, divided age
Best for: corporate keynotes, leadership summits, and association general sessions. Adaptable to specific sectors—including healthcare, financial services, and technology—with the courage through-line held constant and examples tailored to fit the room.
Courage & Purpose: A Talk for Students
The same philosophy, adapted for those deciding what to do with their lives.
For students and emerging leaders, Barcott applies the same core idea to the question they are actually asking: how to find purpose and the courage to begin.
He returns to his own starting point—co-founding a nonprofit in Nairobi as a college senior with a $26 gift and a partnership built on listening rather than rescue—to make a case for service, leadership, and social entrepreneurship.
Purpose, he argues, is rarely discovered all at once. It is built through a series of courageous, imperfect steps. The willingness to start is itself a form of courage.
Equal parts candid and practical, the talk connects social entrepreneurship and service to meaning, drawing on the lives in Courage Can Save US to show students that character is formed early and tested often—and that lives of consequence are available to them now, not someday.
It is inspiring without easy uplift. It treats students as capable of hard things.
Best for: commencements, first-year reading programs, and student leadership events. Pairs naturally with his UNC commencement address.
Testimonials
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