Andre Dickens is Atlanta’s New Mayor

Atlanta has a new mayor named Andre. Here’s what you need to know about Andre Dickens, according to colleagues, friends and former classmates.

• City Council member: defeated a three-term incumbent to win his at-large seat in 2013 and ran unopposed in 2017
• Advocate: While on Council, Dickens championed affordable housing policies like requiring affordable units along the Beltline
• Engineer: studied chemical engineering at Georgia Tech and worked as an engineer for more than a decade
• Deacon at New Horizon Baptist Church, where he teaches Sunday school each week
• Business owner: founded an Atlanta home furnishing company that closed during the housing crisis.
• Atlanta native: raised in Adamsville Dickens graduated from Mays High School. He currently lives in Collier Heights, making him the first mayor who’s lived inside I-285 since Shirley Franklin.
• Father of one 16-year-old daughter, whom he shares custody of with his ex-wife, and enjoys a weekly Taco Tuesday.
• Friend: Buds and classmates as far back as middle school describe the mayor-elect as funny, loyal, intellectually curious, and genuine.
• Goal setter: When Dickens was 12, he met then Mayor Andrew Young, and told his family he too wanted to become mayor one day, according to his mother Sylvia Dickens.
• Podcaster (before it was cool): Roughly a decade ago, Dickens co-founded an internet radio talk show called 3 Degrees of Separation about the connections people share and hosted a segment about faith.
• Dancer: In high school, Dickens was the homecoming king and part of an all-male dance group called NXS that performed at pep rallies. You can watch the reunion performance at his 20th reunion.

Also, this super random fact:

• Per Maya Prabhu at the AJC, Dickens will be the third Atlanta mayor in a row with a mother named Sylvia.