Alabaster’s Drew Thomas makes it as a model.
By Sarah Owens
The pace of New York City couldn’t be more different from the quiet pockets of Alabaster, where evenings slow down and the world seems to breathe a little easier. For Drew Thomas, that stillness is the one thing he misses most about home. “Sometimes your brain needs time to not be stimulated,” he says. “And if you move to New York, then that’s impossible.”
Still, the same relentless energy that overwhelms him is the force that has propelled him forward. Amid sirens, studio lights, and subway tunnels, Thomas has built a career that began as a college curiosity and evolved into a full-time life in front of the camera.
Before modeling, Thomas was known for his jump shot. After graduating from Thompson High School in 2017, he played basketball at Shorter University and Urbana University before transferring to Bethel University, where he earned a degree in business administration in 2022.
Somewhere between practices and papers, he discovered something unexpected—he loved the camera, and the camera seemed to love him back. “I just knew that I liked taking pictures,” Thomas says. “There was this one specific model that I saw on my Instagram Explore page back in like, 2019. And I dm’d him, and I just said, ‘Hey, this seems cool. How can I get started?’ He told me to get some headshots done and submit them to an agency. And so I did that.”
Thomas signed with an Atlanta-based agency soon after—just before the pandemic shut everything down. When work stalled and communication fizzled, Thomas tried again after his transfer to Bethel moved him closer to Nashville. “I took his advice again,” he says. “I took the pictures, and I submitted them to agencies in Nashville, and then I signed with one there. That was really the start of my modeling career.”
Balancing school, basketball, and modeling might sound impossible, but Thomas credits the support around him for making it doable. “I had a supportive basketball coach and professors. They thought it was really cool what I was doing.” Thomas says. “They knew that I was going to do my absolute best, and so they just reciprocated that energy with me, and I didn’t find it to be that hard, because I did have a good support system.”
A One-Way Ticket to New York
After graduation, Thomas made the kind of leap most people only dream about. “Literally kind of on a whim” he says of his move to New York. “Nobody knew that I was actually moving. Nobody. I just did it.”
Thomas’ current manager discovered him on Instagram and, believing he had the potential to thrive in the world’s most competitive modeling market, urged him to make the move. “He was like, ‘You would do really well in New York’… So I listened to him,” Thomas says. “I signed with him as my manager and then signed with one of the biggest agencies in the world. I kind of bet on myself.”
His family was cautious, unsure about the industry. His friends, meanwhile, were excited to see where the move would take him.
Modeling in Motion
Since moving to New York, Thomas’ life has been a whirlwind of airports, campaigns, and ever-changing schedules. “It’s been, I don’t even know the word—hectic,” he says. “I spend a lot of time in airports, different countries, different cities, so it’s a lot of back and forth. But I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of cool things, shoot for a lot of really cool brands, and be on billboards and websites.”
Those “cool things” encompass the kind of jobs most aspiring models pin to vision boards. For Thomas, New York didn’t just elevate his career—it accelerated it. Especially after signing with NewYork Model Management. “I shoot with Nike a lot. I’ve done the campaigns, been on Nike billboards… Tommy Hilfiger, same thing with them,” Thomas says. “Here lately, Lululemon.”
With each job, his résumé grew, but so did the pressure. The glamour of modeling—bright lights, global brands, glossy images—comes wrapped in an unforgiving reality: the work depends on how you look, every single day. “At the end of the day, if you go up a size or down a size, that can mean losing thousands of dollars,” Thomas says. “If you have a breakout on your face because you ate something wrong, then you miss out on a job—thousands of dollars.”
His early days in New York were marked by strict routines and hypervigilance. But as the bookings stacked up and his footing in the industry stabilized, so did he, learning to shift toward balance—long walks, looser rules, and less stress. “I reached this point where I don’t care, and the less I care about it, it’s like my body responds with less stress on it,” Thomas says.
Even with improved balance, one mental hurdle continues to creep in: comparison. In an industry built on image, it’s easy to measure your progress against someone else’s highlight reel. “I look online and see what they’re doing, I’m like, ‘Wow, I want that.’ And sometimes it can weigh on you,” Thomas says. “Then it spoils the victories that you do get … It becomes this thing of always wanting what’s next, or thinking about what’s coming next.”
But even amid the pressure and the constant push for “more,” Thomas is learning to pause long enough to appreciate the wins. Some moments are simply too surreal to rush past—like spotting himself towering 30 feet high on a billboard in Los Angeles.
Life in the City that Never Sleeps
Outside the studio, New York City has demanded its own kind of adjustment—and its own kind of resilience.
In Alabaster, life moved with a certain predictability. In New York, Thomas is surrounded by nine million people, each arriving with their own background, rhythm, and worldview. It’s a kind of personal revelation that small towns just can’t prepare you for.
Thomas describes New York as a place where everything is “niched down,” from food to fashion to music. “I feel like the biggest difference isn’t necessarily the size,” he says. “I think it’s the amount of different ideas, perspectives, and culture here.”
The food scene is a perfect example. “Here you have Burmese, you have Egyptian, you have Ukrainian pierogies. It’s so intricate,” Thomas says. Growing up in Alabaster meant soul food, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, maybe Greek—comforting, familiar, simple. But the city forced his palate, and his mind, wide open.
That expansion hasn’t only come through culture—it’s reshaped him personally. And in many ways, Alabaster prepared him for the jump. The values he grew up with—respect, discipline, accountability—became tools Thomas carried north. “You are a nobody in New York,” he says. “So, it forces you to really do some inner work and think about your spot, not only in the city, but in the world. When you feel like a dot, you have to sit with yourself and say, ‘What’s my purpose?’”
Thomas continues, “I think that if I could change my life, in the aspect of growing up in a smaller city and then coming to a bigger one, I would not. Because I feel like we have this appreciation of the slowness of life, or just kind of the everyday, and then you get here, and your mind just accelerates. In the almost four years that I’ve been here, I’ve grown up so much because I’ve been exposed to this, and it just fast tracks your learning of the world.”
And it wasn’t just southern hospitality he carried with him to the city. His former Thompson basketball coaches—Patrick Davis and Kelly Cheatham—had already forged the resilience he relies on today. “I was coached very hard,” Thomas says. “I know they were coaching me in basketball, but they prepared me for situations like this, living in a city where it’s ‘hard to make it,’ but you have to step up to the challenge. If you’re going to live in a city like New York, you better punch New York before it punches you.”
Looking Ahead
Even with his growing list of credits, Thomas knows his story is still unfolding, and he feels the pull toward something new. “I’m kind of transitioning a bit,” he says. “I’m still modeling full time, but I’m in this content creation space where now I have a following on TikTok, like 300,000 followers. And that’s different.”
As Thomas enters the world of content creation, he’s focused on building toward a future where his performances live beyond still images, something that’s been in the back of his mind for years. “Acting is something that really has always kind of called to me, and I put in the work.” he says. “I’ve been to conservatory here, and I’m well trained.
While Thomas steps into the next chapter, he has some advice for anyone in Alabaster who might be dreaming of a bigger life, too. “Do what you really want to do,” he says. “Really live for yourself. Find out what you want to do, or if you don’t know what you want to do, chase all the things. Don’t hold yourself back in that regard, and you’ll be very surprised at what comes out of it.”
Thomas believes the world is wider than what you see growing up—and that leaving home, even briefly, can change everything. “Get out of Alabaster,” he says with a laugh. “Have different perspectives, meet new people. Have your ideas challenged.”
It’s the kind of advice that only comes from someone who’s lived it—someone who learned to navigate the chaos of New York, built a career in an unpredictable industry, and trusted himself enough to leap without a safety net.
Drew Thomas bet on himself, and he thinks you should too.