Keep it Moving

Employee Spotlight: Kim Bray, Senior Care Coordinator at Hope House

Hope House Senior Care Coordinator Kim Bray has a deep commitment to helping people escape homelessness and addiction because he was once one of them.

 “I’ve been homeless. I’ve been to jail. My wife even divorced me—but she came back and we remarried eight years later, after I was clean,” he shared.

For nearly a decade, Kim has worked at CaringWorks, and most of that time has been at Hope House, the organization’s residential treatment facility in Atlanta for adult men who have experienced homelessness and are in recovery from substance addiction. Not only does he have the professional expertise as a social worker and Certified Addiction Counselor Level II (CACII), but his lived experiences make him a role model to the men he counsels, showing them what’s possible after addiction.

“I’ve been in recovery for 22 years,” Kim said. “My goal is to help other men overcome the same challenges I’ve faced.”

Kim knows firsthand from his own recovery that the path to sobriety often includes relapses and other setbacks, and he leads with truth and realism when he counsels others, even when it’s difficult to hear.

 “I tell them what they need to hear—not just what they want to hear, because what they want to hear hasn’t been working for them,” he said. “I tell them that when you’re honest with yourself and with others, you’re building your future on concrete. But when you’re being deceitful, and not sharing things, you’re building your future on sand and it’s only a matter of time before it caves in.”

Kim added, “I tell them that it’s the hardest thing they’ll ever do.”

Kim also shares a powerful philosophy: “If you don’t change your outlook on life, your life doesn’t change. You can’t change the world; it’s how you respond to the world that matters. And, you have to change how you see yourself before anything else will change. Recovery doesn’t start from the outside in—it starts from the inside out.”

That message of transformation is one Kim repeats daily—literally. Kim works seven days a week—Monday through Friday at Hope House, and weekends at the Gateway Center, another homeless services nonprofit in Atlanta. Kim also used to own and manage two mental health group homes until a few years ago when he transitioned them over to a trusted colleague to manage.

But for Kim, this isn’t work; it’s a calling.

“People ask me when I’m going to take a break. I tell them, ‘I get little mental health days here and there—but this isn’t a job,’” he said. “I’ve had jobs—I was in the Army, worked at Coca-Cola and Time Magazine. Those were jobs; this is a purpose. That’s why I can do it seven days a week.”

Kim’s tireless compassion has even earned him a loving nickname.

“Someone said to me that Kim stands for Keep it Moving because I’m always moving.”

Whether you call him Kim or ‘Keep it Moving,’ one thing’s clear— he is an inspiration to others on the power of recovery: it’s more than finding sobriety, it’s finding purpose.

May 2025