In 2007, a teenaged Samuel Johnson and his four siblings were brought to Georgia from a United Nations refugee camp in Guinea where they’d been living in a tent for eight years after fleeing violence in Liberia.

Since earning since diploma from Holy Innoncents’ Episcopal School, Sam Johnson ‘09 has graduated from Mercer University, gotten married, founded the nonprofit My Vision For Refugees and opened an orphanage in Guinea… And that’s just the beginning.

Sam Johnson was 9 years old when civil war snatched his childhood. He remembers fleeing from his home in Liberia, barefoot in the dark.