Group of Black CEOs Buy Atlanta Basketball Team A New Bus
WD Mohammed basketball coach Farad Abdurrahman understood he needed a better way to get his players to and from their games instead of using Lyft and Uber.
“We had to get to the games, so I used to have my assistant coaches packing up the cars, most times we were in cars, and a few times we took Uber and Lyft but most times we pack them up in my minivans and two other people’s cars, a couple of parents and we drive them all around, and we have to play everywhere, so these are long rides,” Abdurrahman told Atlanta Black Star. Abdurrahman coaches basketball at Mohammed Schools of Atlanta, a small Islamic school in East Atlanta that has K-12 students, with a student population around 120 students.
Assistant coach Gary Weems knows Atlanta entrepreneur Jason Lobdell, who’s apart of a group of business people known as the Circle of CEOs. The group is made up of five Atlanta Black successful businessmen. “I called my brothers and said, ‘Look, there’s this school and they need help getting to their games, and so I thought, what better way than to get them a bus,’” Lobdell said.
It took approx. one month for Abdurrahman to find a bus that would fit the team’s needs. Last week, the Circle of CEOs unveiled a new $27,000 bus with the team logo painted on the outside.
“They’re holding back the tears; you can really see the joy and the appreciation that they feel from someone giving back like this,” Weems said.
Lobdell says he grew up in the same neighborhood as Mohammed Schools and wants to make an positive impact.
“I wanted them to look at me and say, he’s from my neighborhood, he [one of the other CEOs] might not be, but they linked together, they came back and they’re making an impact and not just that, those are some bright students at that school,” said Lobdell.
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