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2022-100-Faces-Book - Flipbook - Page 70


Brandon
Engager. Catalyst. Game changer.
Brandon remembers looking out at the skyline from his
childhood bedroom window.
“I could see the epic view of Nissan Stadium with the
skyline behind it. I grew up on South Sixth Street and
Shelby Avenue and did not have a lot. Growing up in
public housing can be difficult.”
Now, as an adult, his view has changed but that
childhood experience has stayed with him and helped
lead him down the path to a career of service.
“Being a kid from humble beginnings, I just always
wanted to make my world and the people around
me better.”
After high school, Brandon’s youth pastor asked him
to come work at Martha O’Bryan Center, a United
Way partner agency that serves Cayce Homes where
Brandon grew up. So he signed on overseeing the
recreation room.
“When I got there, I just naturally understood the issues
that people deal with living in poverty and trying to
make a better way. I was immediately hooked, and
I’ve done nothing else ever since. That’s one of the big
challenges in community work: You need people with
lived experiences who actually know what it takes.
There are lots of amazing people who do incredible
work all over the place. But it’s great when you can
have a good representation of all the people in the
community and being that I was from that community,
it really gave me kind of a unique viewpoint of the
way we need to make things happen. I think that all
the people that I got to work with over the years really
appreciate that now in Nashville—about how we have
to have the entire community activated to make things
better. You can’t just have people from one particular
industry or one particular side of the track. And that’s
really been what’s fueled me—just trying to use my
experience to help people who were coming up in the
same conditions that I did.”
That fuel eventually led Brandon to his current position
at Nashville Soccer Club, where his role is to find
creative ways to make an impact in the community.
He works with nonprofits, schools, community groups,
churches—anyone who’s a part of the work to make
Nashville better. One aspect of that work is managing
the strong partnership between Nashville Soccer Club
and United Way.
“I don’t know where we’d be as a city without the
leadership and the impact that United Way makes.”
Through that partnership, Nashville SC has been
working hand-in-hand with United Way and the
Blueprint for Early Childhood Success to launch Books
Brothers, which brings men of color to the classroom
as reading role models through pre-recorded videos.
Volunteers read a wide range of age-appropriate texts
for kindergarten through third graders, including books
that allow students of color to see themselves in
the pages.
“We’ve had a lot of success having our players be
involved in that campaign, and we really think it’s
making a difference. And that’s just one of the ways
that we want to utilize our players and our game to
make a difference.”
And just one small way that Brandon is making a
difference—for his old neighborhood and beyond.
Nashville Soccer Club