A Conversation with Carnegie Ethics Fellow Denver Barrows

Was there a moment for you that made you interested in ethics in your professional or personal life? 

I began my military career as an Air Force ROTC cadet while Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still Department of Defense policy. Even after its repeal, the environment I entered in 2013 carried enough residual stigma that I often held back parts of my personal life. That restraint came from fear, but also from ambition—I wanted to succeed while serving, and I believed keeping certain parts of myself guarded was the safest path.

With distance, I’m still trying to understand those choices. I can see them now as a kind of strategic endurance, but I’m also aware that this interpretation may be a rationalization. I’m still exploring whether those compromises were ethical, necessary, or simply the decisions I felt equipped to make at the time. What I do know is that navigating that tension—between self-protection, service, and ambition—shaped the way I now think about ethical leadership: not as a single clear standard, but as a practice of continually reassessing what we give, what we hold back, and why.

How did you find out about Carnegie Ethics Fellows? Why did you think it would be a good fit for you?

I learned about the Carnegie Ethics Fellows program through Out in National Security, and I was drawn to the way it engages the space where ethics and compromise meet real-world constraints. Most of my career has been spent inside institutions where identity, ambition, service, and organizational norms don’t always line up cleanly. Navigating that reality has required compromise around timing, disclosure, and how certain decisions were structured. Some of that was driven by career pragmatism, some by the operational demands of the environments I worked in.

I saw the Fellowship as the right place to work through these topics while also preparing for the ethical decisions that come with future public service. Carnegie brings together people who understand that leadership rarely happens under ideal conditions—you make progress through competing priorities, incomplete information, and systems that evolve slower than the mission requires. The program offers a community where I can look back at earlier decisions with more clarity, refine how I navigate complexity today, and strengthen the foundation I’ll need for the public-facing roles I hope to take on next.

In your job at Amazon you work on scaling electric vehicle infrastructure. How did you get involved in electrification work?

I first started working on electrification when I was asked to complete due diligence on an electric aircraft. What started as an implementation review quickly pulled me into something broader—the realization that we’re not tweaking transportation and infrastructure at the margins anymore. We’re attempting a leap forward, and that comes with real friction across policy, industry, and consumer expectations. This work sits at this intersection of new battery and power technologies and long-established industrial systems, and I found that meeting point exciting.

Why are you passionate about this work? Why do you think it's so important for our future?

I’m passionate about electrifying transportation because it combines energy resilience, national competitiveness, and a practical opportunity to improve the infrastructure people rely on every day. My background in supply chains and national security has shown me how dependent our systems are on reliable, predictable energy. This work has given me a front-row seat to what it takes to deliver large-scale infrastructure—projects that influence how people move, work, and live regardless of socioeconomic background. It’s rare to be part of an effort that is both technically complex and broadly consequential.

I’m also drawn to the scale and ambition of the challenge. Transitioning one of the world’s largest fleets to electric requires disciplined planning, supplier and technology development, and deep coordination across engineering, operations, and policy. That complexity is energizing. Good decisions in this space have long-term impact: stronger domestic manufacturing, improved air quality, more reliable transportation networks, and an infrastructure foundation that benefits communities at every level. Electrification is one of those unique opportunities where operational excellence and public good align—and that’s the kind of work I want to keep learning from and contributing to.

I feel this work’s importance through one of the core routines of my life: running. It’s how I think, how I reflect, often how I socialize and connect with others, and how I understand the world around me. When I’ve run in places with poor air quality, it’s a reminder of what clean transportation and strong policy make possible. In the U.S., we benefit from decades of air-quality action, but that can’t be the finish line. Electrification gives us powerful—though imperfect—tools to improve quality of life more broadly. But it will only succeed if we’re honest about the tradeoffs, the infrastructure strain, and the skepticism that comes with change. For me, that’s part of why this work is motivating: The leap forward is worth it, but only if we engage the hard questions with the same intensity as the ambition driving the change.

What have you learned about ethics and leadership in the Fellowship so far that you have brought back to your professional life?

The Fellowship has pushed me to think more critically about how institutions create space for real debate. Our second module on civics and democracy stood out because it examined how universities should manage disagreement and still function as engines of inquiry. That conversation reinforced something I’ve believed for a long time: organizations—whether they’re large public institutions, small nonprofits, or major companies—have a responsibility to support thoughtful, good-faith discussion. That expectation applies just as much in policy and national security as it does in the operational and business environments I work in every day.

One idea I keep coming back to is Carnegie’s framing of fidelity as honesty, integrity, and a good-faith effort at serving the truth. That principle has influenced how I approach leadership, especially when it comes to creating clearer accountability and decision-making across complex infrastructure programs. It also shapes how I think about Out in National Security’s role in building a community where principled debate and representation can coexist. The Fellowship hasn’t given me a single answer to what ethical leadership should always look like, but it’s strengthened my conviction that institutions set the tone. Leaders have to model clarity, accountability, and transparency—so people have the room to engage with complexity instead of avoiding it.

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is an independent and nonpartisan nonprofit. The views expressed within this article are those of the Fellow and do not necessarily reflect the position of Carnegie Council.