Our Story
Why I'm building Rome's first overnight Child Care Learning Center.
By Eric Kirby, LPN — Founder.
Photography slot
Founder portrait
Real photo of Eric in scrubs or business-casual, at the church wing. 3:4 portrait, eye-level, warm but credible.
My career has two halves. The first was a decade in business — eight years at AT&T working with small business owners on voice, data, mobility, and unified-communications deployments, where I led a call-center support team for three years, piloted internal training programs, served as the company's Subject Matter Expert for Mobility, and was recognized as a five-time Best of the Best Award winner and seven-time Achievers Club qualifier. From that foundation I went on to found Synergy Telecom & Medical Systems, an independent technology brokerage, and VettedCalls, a call-screening product built for solopreneurs running their entire business from a cell phone. A bachelor's in accounting from Jacksonville State University grounded that work in the discipline of running a regulated business — books that close, systems that document themselves, processes that hold up under audit.
In August 2025 I completed my PN diploma at Georgia Northwestern Technical College and became a Licensed Practical Nurse. Today I work third shift at a mental-health crisis facility. The pivot from telecom to nursing was deliberate. I wanted work that mattered at the level of individual people, not just balance sheets. What I found inside the healthcare system was the same problem from a new angle: the people doing the hardest, most necessary work — nurses, EMTs, plant crews, dispatchers, hospitality staff — were quietly drowning in a logistical problem the rest of the economy doesn't have to solve. Childcare. Specifically, childcare during the hours they actually worked.
Video slot
Founder video
60–90 sec phone-camera intro from Eric — why the center exists, what it'll feel like to drop off your kid at 6:30 PM. Authentic > polished.
During my nursing clinicals I heard the same story from classmate after classmate, and from the nurses I worked alongside. Many of them had been CNAs on third shift before nursing school, and their kids had been bouncing from one family member to the next every week. If a babysitter or grandparent got sick, they had to call out — because there is no third-shift employee support. None. And many of the single mothers I met would have qualified for CAPS based on income, but no overnight CAPS providers exist in this part of the state. They were paying out of pocket for inconsistent care, or they were leaving healthcare entirely. The combination of those struggles — single parents stretched past their limit, nurses without a safety net, and the simple fact that first responders, healthcare workers, and manufacturing crews are the people keeping this community functioning — made it impossible to keep walking past the problem. Someone needed to do something about it. So I did.
My wife and I have been married sixteen years. We have three children in the Rome City Schools, one of whom is autistic, and raising them has taught us — in ways that are hard to explain to people who haven't lived it — what real community support looks like, and what its absence costs. Night Owl Academy is being built to provide that support during the hours when our community needs it most. We are completing zoning and Georgia DECAL licensing the way work like this deserves to be done — slowly, properly, with documentation. When we open, we will be there for the families who have been holding the night together with whatever they could find.