Rye Barcott
Marine, Social Entrepreneur & Author
Rye Barcott
Marine, Social Entrepreneur & Author
Biography
Rye Barcott speaks about courage—what it is, where it comes from, and why it is the quality leaders and organizations most need in an age of disruption and distrust. He is the author of Courage Can Save US: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future (Bloomsbury, 2026) and one of the nation's leading voices on courage, leadership, and service in a polarized age. Published ahead of America's 250th anniversary, the book follows ten Americans—nine veterans and a former FBI agent—who carry an ethic of service into public life and choose the common good over self-interest at moments of real cost. It is candid about a challenging moment in our public life and, ultimately, hopeful.
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 operated credibly across worlds that so rarely intersect, and that range is what gives his central idea its weight.
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 100 veterans and national security professionals—including 50 now serving in Congress—and helped pass more than 200 bipartisan laws. As a Marine, he co-founded CFK Africa, a locally led health and youth leadership organization headquartered in Nairobi's Kibera slum that grew from a $26 gift into a hospital now treating more than 40,000 patients a year. His first book, It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace, told that story.
A former TED Conferences Fellow, Barcott has spoken from venues that range from the Gates Foundation and the Mayo Clinic to Amazon, J.P. Morgan, Walmart, and Target, along with leading industry associations and international conferences including the Munich Security Conference and the World Economic Forum. He holds a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MBA and MPA from Harvard, where he was a Center for Public Leadership Fellow and studied under the late David Gergen. He received an honorary doctorate in humane literature from Dartmouth College.
Upcoming appearances include the Library of Congress, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, Aspen Ideas Festival, Salesforce Dreamforce, BIO 2026, 92NY, and the British Parliament.
Speaker Videos
2018 Commencement address: Rye Barcott
Rye Barcott: "We want to advance more voluntary national service"
ABC World News: Persons of the Year Profile - Rye Barcott
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
Related Speakers
)
Humanitarian, Social Entrepreneur, Co-Founder & CEO at Global Citizen/Global Poverty Project
)
)
)