Leon Hendrix III, 22, knows he’s going to get what he wants as a video journalist.

“I want to be that person that people say, ‘He’s done something in video that only he can do,’ and I want to be able to show them how to do it, too,” said Hendrix, a recent Hampton University graduate in broadcast journalism.

The only video journalist at the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, Hendrix said: “It’s the weirdest thing. Everybody seems to know that video is the next thing to do but nobody goes out and does it.”

Drawn to visual media as a child by comic books and Power Rangers, Hendrix uses journalism to bind his love of film and storytelling. He said he wants to use his skills to show the common thread of humanity.

“The best journalists – the Barbara Walters, Anderson Coopers, Ed Bradleys – are really just people who understand what it means to be human, and they convey that every day,” he said.

Hendrix already has an array of accomplishments: studying in Italy, shooting footage of the 2008 presidential election for ” Dan Rather Reports,”  working with an independent production company and receiving a Scripps Howard grant. His next move is to Africa with the Peace Corps in November.

He said he wants to use the Peace Corps to find more story ideas and, more important, to cultivate a personal global awareness and understanding to tell the stories he thinks the world should know.