I am so proud to be a graduate of Brooklyn Tech. I credit Tech with my lack of fear when it comes to trying something new or tackling a complex issue for my business or community. At Tech, I learned how to put a concept down on paper and create a three-dimensional model used to create a final metal object, smoothed and shined in metal shop. This development process has been applicable to everything from advising entrepreneurs in building a business to adapting an old building to a new use.

I now live in the City of South Fulton, an Atlanta suburb created in 2017. Due to my training at Tech and B.S. in Real Estate and Urban Development from the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, I was able to contribute to the South Fulton fiscal feasibility study and was one of three senior staff members of the People’s Campaign to urge voters to approve the referendum during the 2016 presidential election year.

Semi-retired after moving to Georgia, I rode out the economic downturn and volunteered for a State representative, helping draft legislation related to the new City of South Fulton, supplier diversity, access to the ballot, reparations, and other local issues. I am involved in protecting people’s right to vote in a state that has made it harder to access the polls.

I am a licensed commercial realtor and active with Omega Psi Phi’s local graduate chapter. My grandchildren live 30 minutes from my wife and me.

I am a proud member of this alumni group — and still maintain connections Ken Farrell (a few years behind me), Steven Glasser, and Tyrone Dixon — and give credit Brooklyn Tech, along with my parents and family, for helping make me the person I am today. The first in my family to earn a four-year college degree, I am a second-generation descendant of the Tulsa race massacre.