Mayoral Candidate Guide

I attended Eakin Elementary, Montgomery Bell Academy, and earned degrees in Music and Computer Science from Brown University.

I’ve had a career of more than 20 years in the software and technology industry and believe strongly in the power of CS for All as a way to continue offering young people opportunities to learn about programming and computer science. I’ve started small businesses, worked for startups and publicly traded companies, and built, grown, and led teams that have succeeded in organizations of all sizes. Most recently, I served as an Integration Architect for HealthStream, part of our city’s vibrant software and start-up industry. I’m delighted to have people from across my career supporting me.

I’ve served on the Metro Council since 2015, winning recognition as Best Current Metro Council Member six years in a row from readers of the Nashville Scene. In this role, I’ve served as a member of the Charter Revision Committee; the Planning, Zoning, and Historical Committee; Public Works Committee (Chair); and the Traffic, Parking and Transportation Committee (Chair). I’ve also served as a member on various special committees that serve Nashville residents including the Nashville Downtown Partnership Board of Directors (Ex Officio), the Central Business Improvement District Board of Directors (Ex Officio), the Gulch Business Improvement District Board of Directors (Ex Officio), the District Energy System Advisory Board, and the South Central Neighborhood Development Corporation Board of Directors.

Prior to getting elected to Metro Council, I served on several non-profit, civic, and committee boards including as Chair of the Nashville MTA (now WeGo Public Transit) board of directors, as president of Walk/Bike Nashville, the board of directors of the Belcourt Theatre, Tennessee Alliance for Progress, and Cumberland Region Tomorrow. As a member of a Citizen Advisory Committee for Metro Water Services, I helped to fulfill a consent decree from the EPA intended to help clean up the Cumberland River. I also served as president of the Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association, where I helped establish important partnerships with the Metro Action Commission, Nashville Rescue Mission’s women’s campus, Buena Vista Enhanced Option Elementary (since merged with Jones Paideia), and MDHA’s Cheatham Place. We also secured historic status for the Fehr School building and completed a neighborhood conservation overlay district around Nashville’s largest remaining turn-of-the-century workforce housing. As a member of the North Nashville Leadership Council, I worked with multiple neighborhoods to increase political engagement through forums for local elections. I was also president of the Vanderbilt Housestaff Alliance, which supports families of physicians completing their internships, residencies, and fellowships at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

I grew up here, and have been serving our city for 20 years in many different roles, as you’ve seen above. I have a track record of taking on the issues that matter to Nashvillians and delivering results.

But I’ve also seen what happens when we have leaders who aren’t putting people first. And for the first time in my life, I’m hearing from folks who are considering leaving. I’m running for mayor because I want people to stay. And no one is more prepared on day one to make sure Nashvillians can stay than I am.

I’m not offering more plans, I’m offering action. When Nashvillians are in need, I don’t send a letter; I show up. And I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty – when the city couldn’t pick up our recycling, I got a truck and did it for my neighbors myself. I know we need housing, not just hotels. We need transportation options, not more traffic. And we need to invest in sidewalks and schools, not stadiums.

When my neighbor can’t get a pothole filled in front of her house but we can push through a $4 billion dollar stadium, our priorities are wrong. That’s why I was the only candidate who voted no on a bad deal for the city. I go to every forum I’m invited to, and I hear all my opponents say they support things like the arts, diversity initiatives, and improving affordability. But we had a big opportunity to distinguish ourselves through the biggest deal in the city’s history.

And when tough choices come up for a vote, you see where everyone’s priorities really are. My priority is investing in ourselves.

I will choose small business owners - over billions for 10 home games a year. I will choose artists that actually live here – over a few stadium shows per year. I’ll support the artists teaching our children – and my daughter doesn’t have an art teacher right now. That’s why I’m running for mayor. So that every child in Nashville has the teachers they need. That’s a matter of basic equity and fairness. When I say I want you to stay, I’m making a commitment to ensure you can in a city that can pick up its trash, educate its children and keep you out of endless traffic.

More of the same is on the ballot. I’m offering something different. I’m offering the opportunity to reimagine a Nashville for Nashvillians.

To really ensure the best educational experience for all Nashville’s young people, we have to take an approach that recognizes that what happens outside of the classroom impacts what happens inside the classroom.

Inside the classroom, I am committed to ensuring our teachers and their support staff are the best paid in Tennessee. Almost every study about student outcomes—regardless of your outlook on “reform”—demonstrates that a great teacher in every classroom is one of the most effective ways to improve learning.

Outside the classroom, we have to address the fact that young people are coming to school hungry or having experienced trauma that distracts them from being able to focus on learning. We just expanded Community Achieves, which brings important resources into schools where the student populations are experiencing these challenges. It will be critical to sustain that program after one-time funding runs out. It’s time to recognize that a lot of young people are helping keep their families afloat financially and need good paying jobs and internships outside of school hours and along transit routes. We need to ensure that the POWER Youth initiative at Metro Action Commission is not just finding internships but creating lifelong opportunities.

My vision is personal, because I’ll have school aged kids the whole time I serve as Mayor. And I want our girls to be welcomed to a clean, safe, quality school convenient to us by happy, professional educators who have everything they need to succeed—from adequate pay, to continuing education, to books and supplies. And if my daughter struggles in a subject, I want her to be able to access help to get back on track. I want them to have manageable class sizes, STEM, and arts programs. I want to be able to enroll them in after school programs that continue their learning in a fun way. I want my kids to be awake to learn and not face the earliest high school start times in the country. I envision a Nashville with robust summer programs in our schools, libraries, and parks, so they don’t lose what they’ve learned during the school year.

We are way overdue as a city and a school district in taking necessary steps to ensure that working families can meaningfully choose Metro Schools. From guaranteed aftercare seats—especially in elementary schools—to later high school start times, we will start making budget and logistical choices as well as pursuing partnerships that will improve student performance and reduce household stress. We’ll reinvest in both early childhood literacy and youth opportunity.

Finally, as a mayor who will have children in our public schools, I will be inviting people in to celebrate excellence in our schools and reinventing the First Choice festival to encourage all schools to showcase themselves to prospective parents.

I think high-quality schools are an investment in our future. We can look at that investment as a three-legged stool, where we focus on balancing investment in places, people, and programs. But, we have to do so equitably as well.

Ensuring every student has access to a high-quality place to learn begins with what I like to call the “pothole” approach. Rather than paving every road in the county north to south, we send our crews to the areas that need our attention most—and we need to do the same with our public schools. For a long time, investment in education was purposefully unequal. Then, it became about investing more equally and strategically. Now, we have to invest in equity and make sure that we are bringing those areas that are exhibiting disparities in both the resources and funding coming in and the results coming out. As mayor, my capital budget will reflect that priority, whether a community needs attention because the redline is still visible, or because overdevelopment has changed the basic structure and quality of the neighborhood. Investment in place also needs to surround the school – with sidewalks, with bus stops and safe crosswalks, and neighborhoods that educators can afford to live in. And I will say: a comprehensive citywide transit plan is key to both meaningful options for families and the extracurricular activities and before- and after-school programs students need to thrive.