In early April, the George Barrett Social Justice Program and OutLaw hosted Olivia Hill for a lunchtime conversation. Hill is the first openly transgender person elected to public office in Tennessee, where she currently serves as a member of the Nashville Metro Council At-Large. She shared her journey into public service, reflected on the challenges and responsibilities of representation, and explored what inclusive leadership looks like today.
After graduating high school, Hill immediately enlisted in the Navy. After a rough boot camp, where she was continually the subject of beatings and hazing, she built a successful career within the forces. She was deployed three times, two of which were in the Persian Gulf and saw combat in Desert Storm. After 10 years with the Navy, she got out of the forces and ended up at Vanderbilt in the utilities department.
“I started at the bottom, shoveling coal and pulling ash at the power plant, and I worked my way all the way up [to a] senior supervisor in leadership,” Hill said. “But along the way, I held every single position in my department. By trade, I’m a plumber, pipe fitter, welder, high voltage electrician, diesel mechanic, jet engine mechanic, boiler specialist, steam turbine specialist, control specialist, and I designed a control system that’s currently running the Vanderbilt power plant right now.”
Hill describes this large skillset as part of her identity. Despite loving her job, she noted that she never felt like her true self, a feeling that had earlier inspired her to join the Navy. These issues came to a head upon the passing of her mother.
“In 2015, my mother passed away, and that’s when I told everybody my egg cracked, and I could no longer live the lie of trying to pretend to be this guy,” Hill said. “I was just broken, and I didn’t know what it was going to cost me. I didn’t know how things were going to work out. I didn’t know how things were going to be.”
Two years after the passing of her mother, Hill started to come out to people. She credited the Vanderbilt community with accepting and supporting her during her transition. “Vanderbilt was amazing to me. It was very supportive,” she said.
After fully transitioning, Hill noted the things she possessed as a white male that she did not realize she had until her transition.
“The first thing is the loss of my white male privilege that I had no idea that I had until it went away, not [just] here at Vanderbilt, but everywhere,” Hill said. “I had no idea that men don’t get out of the way when they’re walking down the sidewalk. If you’re a woman, I didn’t understand that men will say, ‘Great idea, honey, we’ll come back to you in a minute.’ I didn’t know all these things, and it completely rocked my world.”
After retiring from Vanderbilt, Hill started working in women’s rights for the Human Rights Campaign, where she quickly rose into a role that got her invited to the group’s DC annual convention. There, she attended a keynote address from Danica Roem, the first openly transgender person to hold office in the South, which inspired her to become a politician.
“She called me up on stage, and she meets me at the top of the steps. She gives me this great big, huge bear hug, and she said a phrase that absolutely changed my life,” Hill said. “She said, ‘Olivia, if you want to help elected officials, don’t help them, become one.”
Those words inspired her to pursue a career in politics. When she returned home, Hill tried to figure out how she would be able to make a career in politics work. The answer came to her one day when she was sitting in Nashville traffic. Her knowledge from working for so many years in the Navy and at Vanderbilt in utilities made her see the city’s issues in a different light.
“I thought, I want to run on [a] utilities and infrastructure [platform] and try to fix this town,” Hill said. “And so I ran for office. My slogan was, ‘My name is Olivia Hill, and I’m fighting for a right to sit at the table to fix the broken parts of Nashville.’ I didn’t run as a trans woman, and I didn’t run as a woman. I ran as a qualified human to have a right to sit and take and fix the broken parts.”
Hill won election to the Metro Nashville City Council at Large and has since been working to deliver on her platform , with her sights set on eventually taking a larger role in state and potentially federal government. She encouraged students to help others during their careers.
“Please be engaged,” Hill said. “Finish this and become great attorneys and help as many people as you possibly can.”