Cambridge scholar from Barrington focuses on solving global poverty

Tim Rudnicki is determined to make a positive contribution by helping alleviate poverty in developing countries in Africa and Asia.

The 22-year-old Barrington native intends to do that by studying — of all things — the 17th-century British economy.

“When you look at England in the 17th century across a lot of different variables, it looks a lot like some of the poorest countries of the world today in terms of life expectancy, general education levels, economic output and GDP per capita,” he said.

“The goal is to get a better perspective on economic development as a whole.”

Tim, who graduated this summer from the University of Chicago, was awarded a prestigious Gates-Cambridge Scholarship for postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge in England, where he is studying now.

He is among just 40 students from the United States — and 95 total from around the world — who won the scholarship among 4,500 applicants.

The program “aims to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others,” its website says.

What sets Tim apart from his peers are his admirable, ambitious goals, said Kyle Mox, senior adviser and director of scholarships at the University of Chicago.

“We have no shortage of talented students, but the main difference is his clarity of focus and purpose,” Mox said.

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, associate professor of British history at the University of Chicago, agreed. Tim is as driven as he is humble, Jonsson said.

“There are plenty of confident people around the University of Chicago, but seldom there's so much self-composure,” he said. “He's not a guy who brags.”

Jonsson said he and Tim share the belief that knowing history is crucial to understanding modern policymaking.

“He has the ambition to try (to push for that),” he said. “Very, very few students I've come across have imagined that alternative.”

Tim and his older brother Chris, 25, were raised to have a social conscience, said their mother, Tish Rudnicki, a social worker at the Kenneth Young Center in Elk Grove Village for 25 years.

Chris works as a researcher at the Harvard Business School. Their father, Mike Rudnicki, is a project management consultant.

“It was always a conversation (at home) about how blessed we are, how much we have,” Tish Rudnicki said.

Both her sons — despite being busy with school, athletics and jobs — regularly volunteered for Kenneth Young Center activities, such as the Christmas food drive and visiting the elderly, she said. The center provides mental health counseling to children, adults and families, as well as support services for seniors.

“They always found the time (to volunteer) because it was important to them,” Tish Rudnicki said.

In college, Tim was part of a group whose members volunteered at neighborhood clinics to identify barriers to health for local residents. He helped start another group that reached out to churches and community centers to achieve similar goals.

At Barrington High School he also was a standout soccer player until he tore his ACL before his senior year.

“He was an excellent player, but as a person, he was even greater,” coach Scott Steib said. “If you drew up all the things you'd want a kid to be, that's him. That's crazy enough to say, I know.”

Tim, who was captain his junior and senior years, showed character, hard work and trustworthiness, Steib said. He also was loved by his teammates, for whom he was a role model in the wake of his injury.

“Ninety-nine percent of time, aside from a private conversation, he was upbeat and always positive, even in the midst of injury,” Steib said. “As an adult here you are being inspired by a guy who just sees the perspective and just knows what needs to happen.”

Tim said he's especially grateful to his parents for the opportunity to play on a traveling soccer team.

“I was not the best athlete but I really worked to be someone that could never be left off the team,” he said. “Every time I would change coaches, I was always sent down to the lower teams before I'd climb my way up. Having to constantly work my way back up prepared me to go to school.”

Tim, who loves to cook and has a tradition of baking zucchini and banana bread for friends, already has a job lined up when he's done at Cambridge.

Starting September 2015, he'll work at the Chicago office of Boston Consulting Group, where he interned in the past.

“I will get a chance to work with everything from big huge cement companies to the Gates Foundation to everything in between,” he said.

“I think it's going to be important to work across a lot of the traditional academic and public and private silos that have been perpetuated over the years.”

His eventual goal is to work for an organization focused on improving economic conditions in developing countries.

Attending the University of Chicago, which borders neighborhoods with high poverty and crime rates, steeled that resolve, he said.

“The starkness of the disparity is something that really stuck with me.”

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Tim Rudnicki

Age: 22

Hometown: Barrington

School: University of Chicago

Who inspires you? My parents because they've given me so many opportunities and done so much for me; my brother because he's always been a role model for me.

What book are you reading? “The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century” by Jurgen Osterhammel.

What's on your iPod? Everything from Jimmy Buffett to Imagine Dragons. My friends laugh at my music taste.

The three words that best describe you? Tenacious. Loyal. Thoughtful.