Wickersham Scholars (a.k.a. Millennium Fellows)
Above: (Right) Rye Schwartz Barcott and (Left) Heather Messera.
Rye, one of the first group of Millennium Fellows (as Wickersham Scholars studying at UNC were then known) was an invaluable asset to TISS. A major in Peace, War, and Defense, Rye was fluenct in Swahili - the TISS post-doc in charge of organizing the conference still remembers with relief how thankful she was to find someone who could talk to a somewhat unexpected attendee who arrived from Rwanda for our Africa Conference with very little English and no place to stay! Rye was co-editor of the book Armed Conflict in Africa, which grew out that event and wrote the conference brief for the Army War College for our conference on Transnational Threats. He assisted in TISS outreach programs, developing a program of his own which brought students to juvenile delinquents and as Burch Fellow went to Kenya to study youth violence in the the largest slum of Africa. Rye went on to become founder and president of Carolina for Kibera. After graduating from UNC, Rye served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He is now attending Harvard Business School.
Heather, also a TISS Millennium Fellow majoring in Peace, War, and Defense at UNC-Chapel Hill, was yet another person whose services made all the difference to TISS. In the days before TISS was fortunate enough to have a second staff person, and after our move to Duke, Heather made the trek over from Chapel Hill to Durham on the Robertson Scholars bus to help out in the office, putting together conference packets, designing display boards for our outreach programs, receiving our guests at our conferences, and generally offering timely advice. While a student at UNC, Heather went to Ireland, where she interviewed such notables as Ian Paisley and developing a very well-received honors thesis on the Irish troubles. After serving some years as a staff member on the House Armed Services Committee in Washington D.C., Heather joined the Brookings Institute, where she is now.
