Brothers Remembered, Brothers Honored Recipients

When selected for the BRBH award, Duncan Richey was entering the master’s degree program in city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was serving in an internship with the New York City Department of Transportation on its research, implementation, and safety unit. As this internship indicates, he has a strong interest in transportation planning and safety, within his more general interests in knowledge and policy transfer, the psychological impacts of urban design, and the relations among transit, cities, and society. While an undergraduate at UNC, he learned from a brother in Alpha Sigma about the Burch Field Research Seminar. Through this program, he studied urban planning and policy in The Hague and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, with support from an Alpha Sigma Summer Enrichment Scholarship Program.

In addition to an impressive GPA in his environmental-studies major, Duncan led many impactful student organizations while at UNC. Duncan started Greek Sustainability Consulting (GSC), a group working with fraternities and sororities on waste reduction and mitigating harmful environmental impacts. He obtained funding from the IFC to support projects enhancing energy and water usage efficiency in Greek organizations. Following up on an idea from GSC, Duncan and three other members of GSC started Carolina Thrift. This is UNC’s first student-run thrift and resale shop. The group collects donated items from students and the community at the end of each semester (items that were being thrown away before Carolina Thrift) and sells them at discounted prices at the beginning of each school year. By the time Duncan graduated, Carolina Thrift had hosted two sales and earned $15,000 in profits. Carolina Thrift leaders were invited to speak at the 2019 Sustainable Brands conference in Detroit. Carolina Thrift donates all profits to environmentally focused student organizations and initiatives at UNC.

Duncan also served as codirector of UNC’s oldest student organization, Carolina Kickoff, a three-day student-operated camp that introduces first-year students to UNC. As a codirector, he met 100% of the financial aid need for the first time in program history. This allowed a greater diversity of students to attend.

After graduating, Duncan will consider entering consulting roles in his new home of New York City. In the longer term, he will also consider entering a doctoral program to pursue his interests in transportation, urban design, improving the quality of urban life, and related topics.

The Foundation is pleased to announce that the inaugural recipient of the Brothers Remembered, Brothers Honored Award is Clark Williamson. Clark is entering his third year at the UNC School of Medicine and will likely take a year between his third and fourth years to either explore several research interests more intimately or complete his Masters in Public Health.

A native of Statesville, North Carolina, Clark graduated from UNC in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science in public health. As an undergraduate, Clark served as a clinic advisor for the Student Health Action Coalition, was a member of the men’s club tennis team and volunteered with various organizations, including No Kid Hungry NC and A Helping Hand. Upon graduating, he spent a year developing and implementing a nutrition program with Sacred Valley Health, combatting childhood malnutrition and anemia in the high-altitude Andean communities outside Cusco, Peru.

Clark’s commitment to healthcare access and community involvement has remained strong since his return to Chapel Hill for medical school. He serves as community service chair for the Latino Medical Student Association and helps run a free cardiology clinic for uninsured/underinsured patients. Under the mentorship of fellow Sigma Kurt Gilliland (Σ ’92), he is involved in medical-education research, analyzing bias in test making. Last summer, he worked with an organization to provide COVID testing to patients in rural North Carolina, and he now helps vaccinate people at mass clinics outside of his normal clinic schedule. Finally, he is the medical student liaison to Beyond Clinic Walls, which connects UNC medical, pharmacy, nursing, social-work, and public-health students to provide holistic care to patients with limited access to healthcare.