 Everybody thinks they have all this time, but they don't. You just have to take that first step and put one foot in front of the other and you'll get to where you need to go. My name is Andre Vashon Holmes, and I'm a firefighter EMT and writer and servant leader. That's how I look at myself. I fell in love with the idea of being a journalist, very young. The stories that really impact me are stories about transformation, people who go from A to Z, people who totally find a way to reinvent themselves. I started writing editorials about my experiences growing up, and I wrote an editorial about my father. What I found is everybody can relate to the interiors of our lives. I felt that that was a better way to kind of do social justice reporting because many times I didn't always feel like our humanity came forth in the stories. Andre being a storyteller is so appropriate to the history of storytelling in Atlanta. I mean, we're so rich in heritage. We're so rich in the legacy. Documenting your life, documenting your experiences is so important, and he's so dynamic, doing multiple things. It's only right that storytelling be one of his many tentacles. When the recession happened in 2008, my father encouraged me to be a firefighter. Now, when I graduated as a firefighter and he came to pin me, he looked at me and he said, I'll be honest, I didn't think you had it in you. I just looked at him and I said, what do you mean you got me in this? You know what I'm saying? And he said, it could have went either way, but I'm very proud of you. You would have thought I would have won the Nobel Peace Prize. At some point in my firefighting career, when the chiefs had discovered that I could write, they started to have me do special details and support the public information office. I had discovered that there was a need with regards to learning basic safety information. A lot of African Americans, a lot of people that are marginalized, don't see where they're reflected in this line of work. I'm kind of redefining the image of what a firefighter is, what heroism is all about. I'm firefighter Ray Ray. It's really been empowering to be able to give people information that can help them raise the quality of their lives and look after their families and their loved ones. Part of Andre Superpowers is that he's not your traditional firefighter. You know, we as human beings, you know, should tap into our real being and who we are and that is the strength, not the outer things. And I think sometimes people get caught up in that and I think that separates Andre from the rest. When I moved to Atlanta, I really began to have a confidence level with my sexuality. So I started meeting people who planned the Black Pride and I started meeting gay activists and people who were working and building community. And one of the women that I met was Marianne Adams. She had founded a group called ZAMI. They would do health fairs, they would do scholarship lunches and all of that. When you know that people are in need, you don't sit and ask them what is it that they need and if you can do anything, you figure out what you're gonna contribute and you make it happen. And so that's what we did with ZAMI. I've been to a lot of major cities. There is no place quite like Atlanta and that is because this place was built on the premise that we want people to live their best life. Now, I'm just out here living my life and being myself and I don't have to be a starving artist. I don't have to be a starving entrepreneur. So I'm that kind of hybrid. I still work a full-time job, but other than I operate a small business. And then what I have found is the different platforms that allow me to reach the highest expression of my humanity. And then that looks like entrepreneur. It looks like firefighter, but really it's all the same thing. It's helping people to see they can do whatever they wanna do when they get their mind right.