Kirk Anthony Keys is 34 years old at the time of this interview. He grew up with the passion to play baseball. He lived with his mom and had two older sisters and one younger sister. He knew his father, but his dad did not live with them. Kirk had a mentor, Joe Lee, who was a youth pastor at Kirk's church. He helped keep Kirk on track. The family lived on the Maryland side of the Southern Avenue D.C. border. Kirk never made the distinction between Maryland and D.C. He always liked having friends in both D.C. and Maryland. Kirk graduated high school and completed two years of college before dropping out of the University of Maryland. He worked a few jobs: the Gaylord, the Marriott, the Spy Museum, and a foreign exchange company that became the Western Union Business Solutions. He worked his way up from the mailroom to becoming a foreign exchange dealer. As an adult knowing the value of a mentor, Kirk decided to mentor young boys in baseball. He got involved with the Boys and Girls Club, and eventually started his own nonprofit—the Infinite Evolution Youth Empowerment initiative—to support boy's baseball. He used baseball as a means of teaching life lessons. Kirk wanted to also teach financial management and other kinds of things he did not learn growing up. Coach K (as he's called) and Marshall Pollard (Coach P) at Stanton Elementary School in southeast D.C. worked together to build a multi-skilled youth group, the Boys Institute, which taught all kinds of skills: chess, photography, poetry, and more. The program also included a baseball component. Kirk got the Stanton boys involved in the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy. Kirk was offered a community coordinator's position at Stanton just after he was laid off from his foreign exchange position. He accepted and continued mentoring the young boys. They eventually brought girls into the program as well. During his tenure at Stanton, Kirk lost two boys he coached to gun violence. Kirk has since developed an interesting solution for the increase in gun violence.