I am a native of Mullins, South Carolina, a small tobacco town located on the banks of the Great Pee Dee River in Marion County. I am the oldest of three sons born to Warren and Fannie Simmons. My journey to the Episcopal priesthood has been a circuitous one. Baptized at Mt. Olive Baptist Church however my formative years were split between Mt. Olive Baptist and Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Churches. My brothers and I considered ourselves "Bapti-MEs" part Baptist and part AME.

After graduating from Mullins High School and The Citadel The Military College of South Carolina, I entered the Army as a Commissioned Officer of Armor and Cavalry soldiers and where I would spend the next four years serving both in the Continental United States and abroad. Similarly, after ten years as a pharmaceutical and medical device sales professional I entered The Divinity School at Duke University as a Certified Candidate in the Methodist Church. It would be at Duke and as a result of my participation in the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies where my Episcopal identity would begin to take shape. While at Duke, the study of Absalom Jones, Alexander Crummel and George Freeman Bragg would greatly inform my decision to convert to Anglicanism. Thus, after an "Anglican Year" at Virginia Theological Seminary in 2010 and five years as a Ministry Intern and Resident I was called to be the Curate here at Trinity Episcopal Church in Washington, DC.

I am married to the former Kimberly Louise Robertson and we are the proud parents of Savannah and Winston Simmons.