Family Bonds
Bryce and Erika Burke Honor Their Grandparents by Helping Next Generation of Law Students
January 15, 2025
Life changed fast for Bryce and Erika Burke when Bryce decided to attend law school at the University of Montana.
The Burke family’s ties to UM run deep — Bryce is a fourth-generation Grizzly — so his career at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law both fulfilled a personal ambition and continued a proud tradition. Yet it also created some instability for the young couple as Bryce said he “stopped a career midstream to go back to school.”
“We went from a lot of certainty to a lot of uncertainty,” he said.
Bryce left a banking job in Missoula to make the leap, and Erika — a Denver native who graduated from Gonzaga and moved to Montana after the two were married — had just begun a transition into real estate. Things got more complicated when their first child, Killian, was born as Bryce started his final year in school.
Juggling all those personal and professional responsibilities required last-minute handoffs, planning and, when all else failed, packing up their newborn and bringing him to class. Fortunately, the law school was no stranger to students who were also young parents.
“The law school was very supportive,” Bryce said. “I had Killian in a car seat in classes at times and nobody batted an eye.”
Bryce went on to graduate with honors in 2019 and, years later, when he and Erika chose to endow a scholarship at the Blewett School of Law, these experiences were fresh in their minds. Bryce said private philanthropy gave them a significant lift while he was charting his course through school, and that the couple felt called to give back. They are particularly hopeful their support will help relieve the burden for those similarly attempting to balance parenthood and law school.
“Scholarships helped alleviate some of our concerns at the time,” he said. “With Killian being born and the combination of other things happening, it made that support pretty special.”
Perhaps an even bigger inspiration for the gift was family.
Throughout Bryce’s and Erika’s lives, their families — Bryce’s in Montana and Erika’s in Colorado — were their rock. In 2022-23, when the Burkes lost three grandparents within just a few months, it hit them hard, and it crystallized their desire to honor the people and institutions that made them who they are today.
“Having three close mentors and confidants all pass away in quick succession was tough,” Bryce said. “They certainly all lived good, long lives, but it was still a gut check for us to lose those people who were so important to us.”
Working with the UM Foundation, the Burkes established the Patricia Lynn Tunnell and Guy J. Ossello Memorial Endowed Scholarship. The gift was made in honor of Erika’s grandmother and Bryce’s grandfather, respectively, both of whom were among the family’s many champions for education.
For the Burkes, it was a perfect match.
“I always had the thought in the back of my mind that over time I would like to pay back the support I received,” Bryce said. “We want to help lessen some of the financial and emotional burdens for the next generation of students."
A Force for Change
Sapphire Carter was already on her way to great things before coming to the Alexander Blewett III School of Law, and before earning the Patricia Lynn Tunnell and Guy J. Ossello Memorial Endowed Scholarship.
During her early academic career, Carter amassed a dizzying array of experiences and honors. An enrolled Chippewa-Cree tribal member, Carter graduated from Rocky Boy High School with a Gates Millenium Scholarship and went on to get a degree with honors from Carroll College in 2016.
Over the next few years, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Indonesia, traveled extensively in Southeast Asia and worked as an AmeriCorps member for the Justice for Montanans program.
Now entering her third year of law school, she is poised to earn her Juris Doctor degree with an emphasis in Native American tribal law, with a focus on legal aid and civil rights in practice areas including water and voting rights, cultural property and environmental law.
“I wanted to go to law school because I wanted to help my tribe and Native Americans in general,” she said. “I wanted to be a change agent. Tribes need attorneys working in different facets of the law, and it’s important that we continue to fight for tribal sovereignty.”
While at UM, Carter has served as editor-in-chief of the Public Land and Resources Law Review and was elected treasurer of the National Native American Law Student Association executive board. Last summer, she received the prestigious Siletz Grant from Siletz Tribal Charitable Contribution Fund and fulfilled a lifelong dream of clerking for the Native American Rights Fund. This year, she helped organize the NALSA’s national moot court competition, which came to Montana for the first time.
Like the Burkes, she is also raising a child while enrolled in law school. Her son Mahlon is now three years old and attends the ASUM preschool on campus. Carter said the Tunnell and Ossello scholarship has been impactful in numerous ways, including helping offset the cost of childcare.
“The scholarship is very meaningful for me because I grew up in a low-income household,” she said. “When donors give to students like me it provides even more opportunities and helps open even more doors.”
At the end of this academic year, Carter said she will become the first person from her high school to graduate from law school. She hopes she can be a force for change not only in her own future career, but also for the next generation of Indigenous students.
“Me graduating from law school means my son will have access to more opportunities than I had,” she said. “I hope I’m not only opening doors for him, but also for others in my community."
A Catalyst for Giving
Bryce’s grandfather Guy Ossello always used to say: “Do well, so you can do good.”
Today, Bryce and Erika live in Billings, where Bryce is a successful attorney, and Erika manages a flourishing real estate business. Now that they have the opportunity to help other people navigate law school while facing challenges similar to their own, they are living by that code.
Though they are relatively young compared to many endowed scholarship donors, they said the passing of their grandparents was a powerful catalyst for giving. They could have waited until they were older and even more established, Bryce said, but they wanted to do the most good as quickly as they could.
With the help of UM Foundation staff, the couple structured their gift in a way that met requirements for the Qualified Endowment Tax Credit, helping make their ambitious goal more achievable.
UM law school gave Bryce a launch pad toward success. The academic rigor and contacts made there helped him hit the ground running as an attorney. The personal relationships also helped Erika feel at home in Montana after moving here from Colorado.
With their families providing the guidance and support and the law school helping to build the foundation, the Burkes worked hard to do well. Now, they are doing their part.
“It took help from a lot of people for us to get where we are,” Bryce said. “Now that we can help others, we feel really good about doing that."
