Atlanta
Killer Mike, Atlanta Hawks and Others Team up to Redefine Success for Students
October 21, 2025
Which path is the right one to achieve success? For Killer Mike, it was a non-traditional path. For years, the Grammy-winning rapper has been influential in both entertainment and public policy. Just a day before the Atlanta Hawks’ home opener, he helped to transform State Farm Arena into a classroom, giving students a look at alternatives to the traditional road to success.
The Atlanta native, joined the Atlanta Hawks and the national WAY (Who Are You?) Campaign to give students an opportunity to explore their own paths to success.
“This is a passion project of my wife,” Killer Mike said during an interview with 11Alive. “She believes in encouraging public school, in home economics, woodshop, drafting, nontraditional ways. She believes public school provides you more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
About 80 students from his alma mater Frederick Douglass High School and Atlanta College and Career Academy, had the opportunity to visit four stations in the arena, to see what that path to success could look like with the Hawks. The Hawks Creator Collective gave students insight on media, Hawks chefs and Café Momentum opened a door into the world of culinary arts, and students got a taste of developing tech skills with Per Scholas + SkillUp ATL.
The students also paid a visit to Killer Mike’s SWAG Shop where they listened to him talk about creativity and entrepreneurship.
“Decide who you are young. Don’t wait for people to tell you who you are. Once you decide who you are, go on the path like Don Quixote, find two windmills to fight,” said he said, speaking from his own experience.
“I was raised in a traditional household — nontraditional,” Mike said. “My grandparents raised me because my parents were teenagers when I was born.”
That upbringing, he said, taught him resilience and perspective.
“My unorthodox way of finding Killer Mike is normal because there was no abnormality in the love I got, there was no abnormality in the challenges I got.”
Now, Killer Mike is teaming up with WAY. It’s a movement, focused on showing the youth how to redefine what success looks like. Colette Weintraub, head of Stand Together Music, Sports and Entertainment, the philanthropic arm behind the WAY campaign, told 11Alive she often comes across those who’ve taken the non-traditional route to success in the areas of sports, arts and entertainment.