First-term Councilmember Brenda Gadd was elected in 2023 and represents District 24. In her day job, she is the founder and president of Rethink Public Strategies, a non-traditional governmental and public affairs firm that works for and with nonprofits and socially conscious companies to influence public policy.
Gadd started in politics as a congressional intern, became a congressional staffer, and moved to Nashville to work in the Bredesen Administration almost 24 years ago.
“Nashville for me really has been a safe place,” Gadd said. “It’s been a place for me to grow into my own identity, to feel confident in who I am and to know that there were going to be spaces that were absolutely safe for me.”
Gadd is a co-founder of Emerge Tennessee, an organization that actively recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office. When the District 24 seat became available, Gadd was all in to recruit a solid candidate. But the women she approached started asking why she was not considering a run.
“So, I spent some time thinking about how I love my neighborhood, the policies we’ve worked really hard for, fighting against state preemption, and other aspects of my life and advocacy work in order to allow Nashville to be the unique place it is in the state, which is a place that can be safe and welcoming for a lot of people,” Gadd said.
When asked whether she is considering running for a second term in 2027, she said she was currently exploring that.
“I feel motivated. It’s something I’m really open to doing,” Gadd said, adding that her decision will depend on whether her constituents want her to run for a second term, and whether she feels she could truly represent a potentially newly drawn district in case the Tennessee Supreme Court sides with the state to shrink the number of Metro Council seats from 40 to 20.
How would you describe District 24 and its constituents?
District 24 really is comprised of neighborhoods: Sylvan Park, Richland West End, Whitland, Woodlawn, Sylvan Heights, etc. [The district includes] everything between Green Hills and The Nations as well as right outside the 440-loop of West End that goes down to White Bridge Road.
If I start from the White Bridge area, we have Nashville State Community College and Tennessee College of Applied Technology and moving from there toward downtown, that’s where we move into our neighborhoods that are incredibly rich, not only with history, but rich with constituents that are very civically engaged. We probably have one of the higher voter turnouts in Council [elections] every four years.
Our neighborhoods have been really focused on not only neighborhood preservation but also on intentional growth. Those are always very difficult things, knowing that change needs to happen but focusing on how change happens. I would say folks are very engaged in keeping aspects that mean much to neighbors such as the tree canopy, planting trees and ensuring that we have a lot of preserved open space. I think one of the reasons that my district was hit so hard with Ice Storm Fern is because of our tree canopy, which is so wonderful. But because of those trees being iced over, it brought down a whole lot of lines, and we’re still in the middle of that debris pick up. NDOT actually put out a list of how many cubic yards have been collected countywide, and almost 20 to 30 percent of that was all from my district.
What are some accomplishments you’d like to highlight from the past couple of years you have served on Metro Council?
One of the things that hasn’t been highlighted yet, we did pass a resolution to [research and determine the feasibility of] a revolving loan fund. We’re still working on when it will be formally announced. I worked with advocate Karl Meyer. Many folks, if they don’t know him personally, may have seen him advocating for the basic needs of human dignity and access to housing being one of those.
Another area I’ve been really proud of is in the area of interpersonal violence. We funded a position for a domestic violence dispossession investigator under the Domestic Violence Division of MNPD (Metro Nashville Police Department). It’s an investigator position to focus on dispossession of firearms for those offenders who have an order of protection and those who have firearms that they’re supposed to be dispossessing of. What we did was take the step to ensure that we gather evidence and investigate whether or not that firearm has truly been dispossessed.
And number three, for the first time in Metro government, we funded the purchase and dispensement of period products. We did it through the Department of Health, but it was a one-time funding mechanism. This teases us up for what we can do, which is what other hundreds of municipalities have done across the country. I have been talking to other municipalities and leaders for the last 15 months and have been in touch with the Mayor’s Office for the past year. I want to make sure that we provide that basic human need in Metro-owned public restrooms. Other municipalities have done this, and they’ve done it successfully. Once you put a dispenser in the restrooms and you start figuring out how to order in bulk and how to get the products replaced in those buildings, it’s just like with toilet paper. It’s just as easy to do period products. So, that is the next big thing, to see that expanded and more permanently in our Metro-owned buildings. We have so much support for that, but there will be several hurdles that I know we’ll still have to cross to get there.
You are the President of Rethink Public Strategies. What does Rethink Public Strategies do and why did you select that name nine years ago?
I had the incredible privilege to work as a staffer, as a lobbyist at a law firm and to represent folks in a very traditional government relations sense — where you hire a lobbyist and they go and meet directly with that lawmaker and try to educate that lawmaker to make a decision in your favor. The one thing that I kept seeing is the disconnect of how we engage with the public sector specifically. I was rethinking that [and] really looked at this navigation of policy, advocacy, and civic engagement through coalition building and understanding how public systems operate.
What I learned is that the people that are most impacted or have their own lived experience are the best folks to directly connect with lawmakers. And connecting this to my Metro Council role, it is often the people that are in the neighborhoods, who talk to me about their concerns, who have the best stories that are most effective and are actually changing my opinion or conveying a perspective that informs my opinion.
What I was seeing [as a lobbyist] is just a real disconnect with the rest of the ecosystem of what those entities are asking you to do. And for my heart space is the reason I went off and started my own firm with the support of so many people. I wanted to focus on mission-based work. I didn’t always get those choices [when I was] working for others of who my clients would be.
But with [Rethink Public Strategies], I get to work with those mission-based organizations. And many times those are in the nonprofit community. What I wanted those folks that are doing direct service to really understand is, they are the most powerful spokesperson for themselves and are absolutely critical to improve public policy. And then connecting that through advocacy coalition building with other groups that maybe they weren’t thinking of and coming together to really change public systems for a better result.
Let’s talk about the importance of grassroots organizing. How do you define grassroots efforts? And what role does grassroots organizing play in our existing power structures?
Grassroots organizing is when the people most affected by an issue lead the effort to address it. It is community-driven rather than institutionally driven. So for me, what that means is that solutions originate from the communities themselves and not top-down institutions.
To once again talk about period poverty: what’s been fascinating and amazing is to see students from across Metro — the young people — and then also other organizations that have responded to the need for period products in [Metro-owned] public restrooms. They’ve spoken to teachers and nurses and folks that run a community center or people who work at the library, the court system and found that [staff] always have to keep stuff in their desk because there is going to be someone present who doesn’t have the resource they need for that basic hygiene need. These have been conversations that [usually] do not rise to the top because as women and girls we are so used to just having to figure it out and not having that treated with enough dignity to be heard. I worked with an organization called AWAKE Tennessee — Advocates for Women and Kids Equality, Tennessee. I was their public policy director, and that’s where I really learned about the breadth and depth of this issue firsthand, specifically through their student councils.
That’s a long-winded way of explaining what grassroots organizing really is. Historically there are all these important social and policy changes in the U.S. — whether it’s civil rights or labor protections or voting rights or environmental protections — and they all really began with organizing locally and then elevating, and sometimes shouting, until they’re heard. Then, as more and more people hear that, they are asking for change. So, grassroots organizing plays an essential role in balancing power.
Institutions, whether it’s the government or just large organizations, they move very slowly. But grassroots movements actually bring the urgency, the lived experience, and democratic participation into those conversations much more quickly. I have seen this on the local government level, being that elected official now. Grassroots organizing, when we have certain policy decisions, it really is how democracy, and especially local democracy, stays responsive.
What are some of the causes you are currently working on?
One focus is on public health access and dignity, which includes the work to address menstrual health access that’s often referred to as period poverty.
Another focus is to continue to work to protect our environmental assets. I have been working with the Harpeth River Conservancy on non-native or invasive plant removal around our greenways and waterway access. I’m also still working with them to make sure that as part of the public health equity, we are aware of the health of our creeks and waterways. And so one of the things we’ll be working on with them is making sure we’re doing some education awareness. So hopefully that’ll be coming out very soon.
I’m really excited to be a co-sponsor for legislation that one of my colleagues is moving forward on addressing the childcare crisis.
And I would say I’ve been really proud to be a plaintiff with the ACLU to protect local government officials to basically [grant] legislative immunity to allow us to vote on policies and to debate and propose policies without fear of jail time and without fear of a felony.
I know that’s not directly a piece of legislation, but what I have found in this role is that … local government is the place where we should be able to respond to communities’ needs, and we should be able to do that without any political interference and especially without political and anti-democratic interference and authoritarianism from the state government. And so it’s been an honor to fight back, even if that was just in the court system.
Anything else you would like to add?
One of the things I learned in this role in public service is that strong communities are really built through participation, whether it’s neighborhood associations or just neighbors on the street, advocacy groups and civic conversations. What I have found is that the more people engage with their local government, the stronger democracy becomes and the richer the conversations become.