At-large councilmember Olivia Hill made history this past September when she was elected as the first openly transgender elected official in Tennessee. She said it feels amazing to have won a districtwide election and that everyone in government has gone out of their way to make her feel welcome.
Hill is focused on ideas to update Metro’s infrastructure needs and currently serves as the chairperson of the District Energy System Advisory Board, which oversees Nashville’s District Energy System that provides centralized heating and cooling services to Downtown buildings.
Hill brings plenty of experience having worked in utilities and infrastructure in her two prior jobs. The first one was in the United States Navy where she was deployed three times and saw combat in Desert Storm. After returning to Nashville she started working at Vanderbilt University’s power plant. Hill, who is 59, said this is her first political office.
What made you decide to run for a Metro Council seat and why at-large rather than for your district?
The biggest thing that rocked my world after my transition was the loss of my white male privilege that I had no idea I possessed until it went away. And it went away in a blink.
So, I started standing up and fighting for women’s rights. I got heavily involved with HRC, the Human Rights Campaign, and they invited me to their annual convention in Washington, D.C. When I went to DC, the keynote speaker on the first day was Danica Roem, who is the first trans woman ever elected in the South. She got up and got to speak and got the crowd all roiled up about our rights to vote. It was a really good speech. As a trans woman, she’s a hero to me because she’s blazed the trail for so many of us.
They had a microphone set up for questions. And I thought, ‘When in the world am I ever going to have the opportunity as a trans woman to speak directly to Danica Roem?’ So, I walked up to the microphone, and I said, ‘Danica, I just want to say thank you for blazing the trail for so many of us. I’m here to help as many elected officials as I can and stand up for women’s rights and try to help as many like yourself…’ And she put her hand up and stopped me talking. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve just been corrected by Danica Roem!’
She then called me on stage in front of a couple of thousands of people. She hugged me and said, ‘Olivia, if you want to make a difference, you need to become an elected official.’ At that moment she spun me back around and she’s like, ‘And the next candidate for Nashville, Tennessee, is Olivia Hill!’
It was at that moment that I made the decision to run for office.
I started trying to put things together of where I would run, how I would run, what would I run for. It was because of my expertise in utilities and infrastructure, which is all I’ve done for almost 40 years, why I decided to run for an at-large seat. I figured it would be much easier for me to work on the utilities and infrastructure for the entire county if I was to run countywide rather than for one specific district.
I still get chills sometimes when I think back that we did this and somehow pulled this off. There were so many people who told us there is no way a trans woman can be elected in the South. There is no way a trans woman can win in the state of Tennessee. Yet so many Nashvillians stood up and proved them wrong.
I have a lot of people stop me and thank me for running because their child, brother, sister, father or mother has now representation. Trans people are moving out of state because they feel afraid for their child, their partner or themselves. I try my best to talk them into staying and fighting, but I completely understand their feelings, what they’re going through, and their need to move somewhere that’s safe for their family and their person, whether that be a partner, child, sister, [or other family member].
When you come in as a newbie into a legislative body. How do you approach that?
Everybody always asks me, what trans stuff are you going to try to fix in Nashville. That’s not what Nashville elected me to do. Nashville elected me to fix the broken parts of Nashville. And that’s what I’m working on.
I have spent the last six months going around and meeting with department heads, meeting with the directors, meeting with everybody to find out what their needs are. I have met with Metro Water, NDOT, District Energy, the Mayor’s Office, the Vice Mayor, Chief Swann (Fire), Chief Drake (Police) and different other departments.
I’ve got a lot of ideas that I think would be good for Nashville. But I’m smart enough and have been in the business long enough to know not to be that new person who comes in and wants to put their stamp on something. I’m trying to ask questions first. I’ve got a bunch of stuff I’m working on in the background. I try to be helpful to the mayor of anything transit related. I also spent a day with Officer Cantrell out of the West Precinct, and going around to all the different homeless camps in Bellevue to learn where everything is, who the people are and how we can do something to make this better.
What would you like for the city to invest in more?
Transit is something that we have to have yesterday. We ought to have a transit system that hits most major areas of the city and runs 24/7.
Your background is in engineering and your last job was managing Vanderbilt’s internal power plant. How does that experience translate into your focus areas on Metro Council?
By trade, I am a plumber, pipe fitter, welder, high voltage electrician, diesel mechanic, jet engine mechanic, control specialist, steam turbine specialist, and so, I cover almost every way that you can make steam and/or electricity.
This is probably a 30-40 year plan, but I would love for every single utility in Nashville to be underground. I definitely would love for all new utilities on the East Bank to be underground.
What are some of the goals for the next four years?
I’m trying to find a way that every single department in Nashville keeps communicating with each other. It’s one thing that they don’t do. Metro Water does not necessarily communicate well with NES. NES does not necessarily communicate very well with NDOT. I’m trying to find a way to pull us all together and have us all work more efficiently.
Getting all the departments to communicate and putting utilities underground, those things bring change. For some folks change is very hard. I’m so tired of hearing, “Olivia, that’s how we’ve always done it.” Because things have to change. Things have got to get better.
We’re at a pivotal point in this city, and it is my goal and my dream to make Nashville the greatest city in the entire South. I think that’s a very achievable goal, but we’ve got to have transit. We’ve got to have a good utility infrastructure. And when I say utility infrastructure I mean power, water, storm drain, sewer, gas, Internet service to everybody, and things like that.
One thing I spoke about in my campaign is that everybody understands Nashville traffic. People understand that when we get on a road and the speed limit is 70, and we’re doing 35, something is not working. We notice the difference.
With water or electricity, we don’t recognize when these utilities are slowing down until they’re about to stop. All we know is that when we turn the faucet on, water comes out. Or when we switch the light on, we have electricity. People are not aware of this aging infrastructure until they don’t have water, they don’t have sewer, and they don’t have electricity.