Meet Johnnie Alexander of Elevated Genius Solutions, LLC and The Elevated Genius Photography in The Metro Atlanta Area

Today we’d like to introduce you to Johnnie Alexander.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My current passion for mental health and photography were both shaped by a point my life when my mother I were living in a homeless shelter in New York. My mother and I would relocate from Lawton, OK and I would move north with hopes better opportunities. When things didn’t go as planned, we would end up in a homeless shelter in upstate New York. As a result, my mother would fall victim to depression and eventually drug usage, landing her in and out of jail, and me having to fend for myself at a young age. Thanks to my mentor Keith, godmother Anna, and a volunteer at the shelter Margo, I was able to escape an all too common fate of many kids living homelessness. Keith would be the first to introduce me to photography and it would become an outlet to the chaos of my daily life. Anna, a mother of 8 of her own, would take me in and make sure I ate and went to school daily. Margo would host writing workshops and after school tutoring programs for kids in the shelter and bring many other colleagues and resources to assist the kids in the shelter in any way possible. All three would play a major role in keeping me out of trouble, but Margo would be the person that would ultimately save my life. Margo had assisted in helping my mother and I find a boarding school called Milton Hershey School in Hershey, PA a school for kids living in poverty and facing hardship throughout their dialy lives. During the process, my mother would end up getting arrested and I would be living unsupervised for a little over a month. At the same time, I made it pretty far in my admission process into Milton Hershey School and was only a few months away from being fully admitted. When hearing the news about my mother being arrested and me at risk for ending up in foster care, Margo would go to the jail were my mother was being held. With legal documents drafted by her husband who was lawyer, Margo would have my mother sign away temporary custody to her, allowing me to live with her until I would go away to boarding school.

Now, faster forward, Milton Hershey School would award me a full scholarship to Xavier University of Louisiana, where I would receive my bachelor’s degree in Psychology, and I would eventually receive my master’s in social work from Fordham University of New York. Now, I am a licensed Mental Health Clinician in the states of New York and Georgia. My passion for social work is all tied to this period of my life. Margo and I would attempt to go to back to the same shelter I once lived to volunteer, but she and I would be banded, and she would be accused of kidnapping me. Since then I have worked extensively servicing the underserved and underprivileged, especially young men of color. Having recently relocated with my wife to Georgia, my first job was working at Atlanta Mission’s Men’s shelter. I now work as a Therapeutic Mentor for an organization that has expertise in helping families work through a large spectrum of behavioral and emotional challenges. I am also in the process of building my own brand, Elevated Genius Solutions, LLC, with hopes of providing the same services to black families and individuals, especially young African American males.

Has it been a smooth road?
Some of the struggles in my journey has been the process that I have had to go through in order to services the populations that I am most passionate about. While in grad school I first interned at the community health care clinic that I was currently working in, but I was unable to service clients due to conflicts with the insurances that they were covered by. Being it was a community healthcare clinic many of the patients were covered by Medicaid and Medicare, so I wasn’t allowed to see many patients if they weren’t covered by private insurance. Following that internship, I had another that I was initially excited about because it was working with African American and Hispanics male youths living in foster care. After a month at this internship, I would have an exchange with the director, a white woman, over my desire to take a strength-based approach to counseling’s the kids I served. Instead, she thought it was a better fit to tell them that they wouldn’t be more than taxi drivers. She would then question if I understood the struggle of men of color and that my approach was a bit too hopeful and realistic for them.  I soon asked my director at Fordham to end that internship. Eventually, I would go on to work for a clinic in the South Bronx working with people living with HIV/AIDS. I would start off working as an HIV tester and counselor and once I became licensed I would my transition into the Behavioral Health Department, making me the only license therapist specializing in people with HIV and AIDS. Three days a week, I would see only HIV positive patients, one day a week I had a caseload of young males of color, middle school to high school age, (not HIV positive), and Fridays, I was a psychiatrist liaison of a medication management clinic. This was very rewarding, and I gained a lot of experience but being newly married and with the increase in the cost of living in New York, my wife and I decided to be part of the recent new wave of transplants moving to Atlanta. Our hopes were high at first because my wife was able to transfer from her job at the time to Atlanta, but things wouldn’t turn out so well for me. After over a year of searching and living away from my wife, I was able to find work at Atlanta Mission. It would be a major pay cut and I would take a step backward, being it wouldn’t be doing counseling initially but just case management, slowing down some of the momentum I gained to apply for my clinical license. In the end, a counseling role would open up at Atlanta Mission and I started doing contract work with a company called Wonder and eventually would work for them full-time.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Elevated Genius Solutions, LLC and The Elevated Genius Photography story. Tell us more about the business.
My business is Elevated Genius Solutions, LLC will include, life coaching, one-on-one therapy, tellamental health services, therapeutic mentoring, consulting, and photography as therapy. In short, I am a licensed mental health clinician and photographer and want to end the stigma around how we all view and use therapist and mental health clinicians. I specialize in using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Motivational Interviewing Techniques, and Photography to help people reach the highest sense of themselves. Throughout my experience, I am most known for my out-of-the-box and practical way of providing counseling and coaching. What sets me apart is that not everyone benefits from nor looks for a traditional form of therapy, so I pride myself in meeting each person where they are so that they are ultimately the ones that determine their own success and growth. The truth is you don’t have to be clinically diagnosed with an “illness” in order to benefit from a therapist or counselor and those who are, aren’t necessarily “ill” but maybe just different and just need a little more help and in finding their genius. What I’m most proud of is that I can use all the tools and experience I have gain to promote mental and emotional growth and a manor I see as effective and beneficial. My photography acts as an extension to this because often, I tell me people I am freelance photographer but more so a therapist that takes pictures. My photography is an extension of me as a clinician because I like the stories behind the people I photograph and how my pictures shed light on the person and reinforces positive self-image. 

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think health overall has become a booming industry and is continuing to grow and I think that mental health is the next major piece to it. With many celebrities promoting mental health and not being ashamed to say that they themselves are going to therapy. Right now, it seems that it is a trend, but my hope is that this momentum will continue so that all kinds of clinicians from LPCs, LMSWs, LCSWs, PhDs, PsyD, will be valued and sought out and valued. I hope that in the next 5-10 years, mental health will be more mandatory for all people and not just ones that can afford it or those that are diagnosed with a mental disorder.

Contact Info:

• Address: 400 West Peachtree Street NW
  Suite #4 – 1058
  Altanta, GA 30308
• Website: ElevatedGeniusSolutions.com
• Phone: 9143910376
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theelevatedgeniusphoto/, https://www.instagram.com/theelevatedgenius/,https://www.instagram.com/elevatedgeniussolutions/

Image Credit:
All images are original pictures taken by me Johnnie L. Alexander, IG @TheElavatedGeniusPhoto

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