Nyuol Tong is a refugee from South Sudan who graduated from Dunn School in Santa Barbara, California, where he started his academic career and founded a nonprofit organization (www.SELFSudan.org) to bring the empowering and liberating opportunity of education to his community in Africa. Tong strongly believes in education and speaks to high schools, communities, churches, and universities across the United States about his experience as a refugee in Africa, about SELFSudan, and about his vision that Africa will be liberated from within and never from without. The Reginaldo Howard Memorial Scholarship not only afforded Tong the world-class education of Duke, it has placed him in a community of growth comprised of scholars, leaders, and people devoted to service.  While at Duke he was the editor of There Is a County: New Fiction from the New Nation of South Sudan (paperback, 2013).  He double majored in Philosophy and Global Cultural Studies.