Nike Baseball Camp at Brook Run Park, hosted by ATL-MLSA

He received the 2016 Barak Obama Honoree award for Lifetime Achievement in community service for his continued work with our youth and community. He will forever be in shrined in our 44^th Presidents Library with all other recipients. He has been a proud member of the 100 Black Men of America since 2008, and has served as the President of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County Inc. 2015-2018 In this role, he served passionately with other community leaders in the organization, to mentor underserved young men and women towards having an improved quality of life, by offering exposure and access to key community influencers, scholarships, leadership programs and international travel.

Serving the community has always been very rewarding to John, he watched his father mentor kids with absent fathers at home and create the first organized football program in the local Eastlake Meadows housing project to promote team work and sportsmanship. His dad wanted to prove that he believed God made all kids the same, he signed his oldest son and name sake (John jr.) up first. But he proved he believed all that kids are created the same, just taught to be different. As a result, another area in which John Jr. has sown seeds which have nourished the community is with his youth sports program.

John is the Executive Director and founder of ATL Metro RBI, Inc., a baseball program that provides health and wellness sports activity, mentoring and leadership, as well as scholarships to kids in inner cities. To date, The ATL Metro RBI program has provided over $250,000 in scholarship money to students attending Savannah St., Tuskegee University, Morehouse College, Albany State College, Alabama State University, Lemoyne Owen, Clark Atlanta University, Jackson State University, Texas Southern FAMU, Benedict College, Grambling University, Southern University, Chipola NJCAA, Seminole State, Wallace Juco Voorhees and other HBCU’s.

This program has been supported in part by Major League Baseball and the Atlanta Braves organization and has directly and indirectly helped over 400 kids go on to play college baseball and professional baseball, through the affordable baseball programs and guidance provided. In addition, 400 - 500 students were hosted in a positive baseball coaching program every summer. In 2019 John started an international program with the sponsorship of MIZUNO sports-BETTER BASEBALL, he and his players have provided over $100,000 dollars in much need sports equipment in the Caribbean islands of Curacao and Puerto Rico where John was awarded the Roberto Clemente award in 2019 by Puerto Rico City Mayor.

In this area, John offers leadership and guidance drawing from his own college experience as a D1 All conference baseball player at Georgia State University, where he lettered for four years. He was also a conference academic athletic honoree in his junior year and was 1^st team All-Conference 2nd place vote getter for conference player of the year and invited his senior year to be an unrestricted free agent by the Pittsburg Pirates organization directly after the MLB draft in 1986. John received his formal education from Georgia State University where he majored in Marketing and minored in Public relations. He is a proud Executive Board Member of Grady Memorial Hospital, Serves on the Board of 100 Black Men of America, Dekalb Chapter. John has two sons John III and Jordan and has been married to his college sweetheart since 1987 Tekki T. Hollins.