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A Curious Exchange goes beyond the talking points to uncover how impactful people executed bold initiatives.
My guest today is Alice Rolli, who made a major vocational bet on her career in 2023 when she ran for mayor of Nashville. Now, her career had not included public office up to that point, and this was a massive shift for her.
She didn't win, but she finished second in a really crowded field, and it's an impressive testament to her character
And a fascinating story that any of us who've not sought public office would be intrigued by.
before she ran for mayor, her career spanned nonprofit, business, and government leadership roles.
Alice tripled the size of education company, quaver Ed, and as GM of World Strides. She expanded its reach to 50 countries and in government she's served as assistant commissioner of strategy for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, and a special assistant and later campaign manager.
To US Senator Lamar Alexander. Alice currently serves as president and executive director of the Children's Hospital Alliance of Tennessee, where she leads policy, advocacy and quality work to improve children's health outcomes.
Alice received her bachelor's degree from Stanford University and an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. She's married to combat veteran Dr. Michael Rolli, and the couple have two school aged sons. In this wide ranging discussion, we talk about her campaign effort, her career, and some of the lessons she's learned along the way.
Alice, welcome to the show. Thanks for being with me today.
Thank you, Nathan. It's so good to be with you.
You know, in 2023 you made a decision that most of us never make you decided to run for mayor in a major US city. What was behind that?
Well, I, at the time I was 44 years old. I thought I have about 40 years of my career left. My dad is, you know, and my mom are both in really good shape and they're almost 80, and I thought, I've got 40 years left in this town, and I can either join the conversation and try to.
Bring a different perspective to the way that the city politics and the city government was going. Or I could be, you know, one of these kind of keyboard warriors that sort of says, gosh, if only someone who thought like me jumped in there and, and expressed things. So mostly it was saying, this is a place that I love.
This is a place I grew up. This is a place, uh, when my husband finished nearly 20 years, um, service in the army that we came back to. And it was a place that I felt like. Having a little bit of a different attitude and a little bit different voice could help
some of us look at that possibility through the lens of, I could be a keyboard warrior, or I could maybe attend a city council meeting and raise my hand and, and say something.
It's a much bigger leap to go for running, running for mayor. From that you haven't held office in your past. So this was a first time effort at running for office. So because of that, you're facing the possibility that you might not win. How did you think about what the consequences might be of winning versus not, not winning?
How did that play into your desire or your intent to run?
I think a lot of people maybe start asking the question of, am I gonna win? And I think I started with the thinking about what difference do I believe I could make, right? And so I would say if you're running for office or you're thinking about starting a company, it's sort of looking at.
Not am I going to win or lose, but is what I hope to accomplish worth my own time and my own investment. And I would say running for office is, uh, like you. Like you said, I've never, never been elected before. Never run for office before. I have worked for people before, uh, worked for Lamar Alexander, who's the United States Senator from Tennessee and.
For people in the healthcare community. It was the chairman of the Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee for a long time. I think very well respected former US Secretary of Education, and I also had worked for Governor Bill Haslam, but I, half of my life, more than half of my life was in running mostly private equity backed education companies.
And, and so yeah, the idea. It is very different than helping somebody else who's running and then putting your name on the ballot. And I guess to, to maybe encourage people to think about what do you hope to accomplish and then recognize that starting a business or starting a political campaign, the first thing that happens is a lot of people tell you why you can't win.
And I, this phrase rattles around in my head, which is that the big shots, they can't elect you, but they can defeat you. And what does that mean? That means that if you let. The big shots, the people that sort of say, I know who can win or who can't win. I get to decide who can be a candidate. If you spend most of your time listening to them, you will convince yourself to never do it like you will.
I mean, like all of the things in the world would say do not do that. Right? But what's fascinating is if you are brave enough to sort of crawl up the ladder, if we think of it as a diving board and walk out onto the end. Jump in and you know, there's all these people standing around going, uh, she's gonna drown.
She's not gonna make it. She doesn't know how to swim. She's never done this before. The whole thing's gonna fall apart. And if you jump in, what I found is that there are people there at the bottom, at the middle, at the top who, who do lift you up. And Nathan, you were one of. Those right when I first launched and, and so many of our classmates from Darden, when I first launched the campaign, it was, I think it was March 7th, the first filing report.
First sort of filing deadline was March 31st, and there's a lot of pressure of a first time candidate. There's no polls. It's all about like. Can you, can you present a viable product and a viable vision? And then can you raise some money, uh, behind it to be competitive? And um, and I remember the very first, I mean, you probably remember too, the very first fundraiser and one of these angels, she said, Hey, if you do it, I'll host a fundraiser for you.
And, and then that. You know, another person is there who says, Hey, if you, if you get there, I'll stand up my fifth grade teacher. I'll hold a sign for you. And I guess in the same way, like running a campaign or starting a business or making a decision like that is the bravery to say, I'm going to do it. I believe enough in my.
Self that someone will show up for me. But no, you're right. It's a little bit crazy because in 60 years of a combined city county government, there's only one other person who like me, made it to the runoff and was never elected before. So the odds were completely not in our favor. I was outspent 10 to one, but I believed enough in what we needed to say that I, that, I mean, it changed my life running and, and if I had to do it again, I, I would and I would ignore.
The naysayers and just didn't, and, and keep going.
The belief in what you were standing for was strong enough that defeat was less of a factor than merely standing for what you believed.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and some of that, like for us in the city, what I, what I was think, and I would say it's, it's similar probably in a lot of American cities, a couple weeks after I lost, or some people would say silver lining came in second, uh, got the silver medal.
The mayor of Dallas published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where he, my father sent it to me. He was like, this is exactly what you were saying, right. That cities, if cities are used as a laboratory or as a backdrop for. Progressive political agendas and not for like, the functioning of the city.
That, that this is at odds with like, what has been great about American cities as hubs of innovation, as places that are safe, as places that people wanna start, a business that people wanna raise a family. And if they start to go to, you know, in a, in a different direction than that, and become more performative and, and run by people who believe that the city's purpose is.
To sort of try to act as a, a utopian employer that it kind of lo loses it its way,
so you were on track. You, you, you essentially, what you were pushing on was a affirm elsewhere in other, in other
cities. Yeah. And it's not, I mean, it's certainly not a red wave to have, you know, one mayor of one city in America, the, a large city be a Republican.
But the con but the concept, you know, I think, uh, I think holds,
yeah, it's, it's worthwhile. I love the image that you use of jumping in off of a high diving board and it's not obvious. There's no crowd at the bottom of the pool waving, come on in, water's fine. You're, you're saying you have to jump and after you jump, you discover that there's support and it's just so well put because the naysayers are obvious.
You know, I hear a lot of people talk about imposter syndrome and we all have that voice, so I'm, I'm sure that voice is among the chorus in your head. How do you manage that in such a publicly visible initiative like you took?
I mean, I will be honest. You know, you and I were business school classmates. I I, I remember there were days when I started a business school thinking like, I don't think I'm supposed to be here.
I'm not coming from a traditional business background. I'd been a high school teacher. I'd worked for Lamar Alexander. That voice that's like, I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to be here. You do that on a. Stage, and I think this was the moment, there are a couple of moments where I realized that the imposter syndrome is gonna make you feel like there is someone who is exactly perfect, who's got all the right background, who has all the preparation, and they are the person who's supposed to be there and you're missing these three things.
Right? And a, a couple of places where I would say both what was important to talk about, who was important to stand up for, and then this imposter syndrome. I guess the issue is sort of ca came together. Is, um, one, I was, you know, we were probably six or seven weeks into the campaign. There were probably 40 public forums, maybe more than that.
Media covered them and every word that you said, you know, was scrutinized and replayed and everything else. Uh, but one of my best friends from growing up, uh, is a lawyer and, uh, she does not live in Nashville. She came with her son for a week in the summer to just help. She just said, I'm just gonna come and help.
And her son and my son knocked on doors and she helped picking up from camp. And this is what I mean about the army of angels that just kind of come out and they say, Hey, you're doing something really brave. I wanna go help you. And she came. She not knowing anything about Nashville's politics, the personalities, any person on the stage.
She came to one of these. Forums that we did when we were leaving and she was like, oh God, you're so much more qualified than all these other people. Right? And this voice, like sometimes it takes a friend of yours that has nothing to do with it. 'cause you're sitting there thinking, well I've never, you know, uh, there's a city council member up there, there's two state senators up there, there's a property assessor there.
Two guys that are writing seven figure checks, like they all know what they're doing and I, maybe I don't belong on this stage. And so I would say for your friends, bring an old friend. And it's not, you know, the old and honest friend who's gonna be like, you made sense on that stage. And then the other, the other place I would say in the imposter syndrome.
I think sometimes we decide there's someone who has all of these things that we don't have. And so we talk ourselves out of, out of doing something. And I'll, and I'll give an example when you, uh, if anybody's thinking about running for Mayor of Nashville, um, but tip, if you, the former mayor decided kind of in the 11th hour, he wasn't gonna run for reelection.
He had had the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, our, our state. Our city's, uh, police force. And what's interesting is the, it's the only union whose endorsement in the city is voted on by the members and not by the leadership. So for me, as an outsider, it was the only endorsement really, that I could get.
And I, I did get it, but the other ones. Or, you know, inside baseball you have to, you know, have, have kind of been with the brass for a long time. But I went in because he had pulled out their endorsement was for grabs. And so I went on the first Monday of every month, you can go by the lodge and talk to the officers and introduce yourself and they give you a minute to speak and, and just tell him why you're running.
So the first time I went was. First week of March, no one else was there. And I remember thinking like, oh, all these other people, they must have all been here before. They must know something. I don't. Of course, of course. They're, they're there. Then fast forward, uh, our city experienced a incredible tragedy in March, in late March, the shooting at the Covenant School and our officers.
Unlike the officers in Uvalde, Texas didn't wait. They ran in, they ran in, and they took the shooter down. And that video of, of the, these officers was blasted around the world saying, look at what the Nashville Police Force did. Uh, in this terrible, it was
very moving. The, the courage that they showed, um, and the lack of hesitation, they just immediately sprang into
action.
I mean, complete courage and if you want to be the mayor of the city, the police report to you. What would you do in that moment? But go and say thank you. So five or six days later, it was their next lodge meeting, the beginning of April, and all of the congressman's office were there. I was still the only mayor's candidate.
And I remember saying to the guy James Smallwood, who ran, you know, ran the union, like, where is everybody? Why are they not here? And he said, they don't wanna be seen with us as politics. They don't wanna be seen with us. And so I would say like in your mind, where you think everyone else knows the right thing to do, and maybe they know something, I don't know, stand up and say.
Say, like, say what you believe. Say it's okay. Police are not perfect. It's okay to say you're not perfect, but it's also okay to stand up and say thank you and to be kind of brave enough to do that. So I do, um, imposter syndrome is real. I would say though, if, you know, knowing that the, that the audience here is, is.
People sort of later in their career, like you and me in our mid to late forties, that you're probably at a point in your life where the only thing that's gonna hold you back is yourself. There is nothing from a like preparation. I mean people who are, I mean, I mean you. You are more prepared than you think.
So jump off the diving.
That's so well said, and something that you brought up that's counterintuitive is having support from people to help you keep overcoming that imposter syndrome. You read stories perhaps in social media, perhaps books of people who come with these ideas, and then they just show a lot of bravery and strength to go pursue.
But what you're saying is that, you know, it was after jumping in and having someone to support me to say, I'll host a fundraiser for you. If you run, then that's what really compels you to keep going, is having people who are, who are alongside you along the way.
Yeah. And it's not, you know, and it's not all like, uh, you know, strawberries and butterflies, right?
I, I think it's also recognizing that, you know, I think if a lot of people are a sales background, great book, the Mary Kay Way, um, Mary Kay, you know, building a, a, a huge distributed sales force and this idea of every, she, she had this idea of like, you need nine nos to get to a yes. Right. So you've built your business, you've got your business plan.
You've been told if you can just meet with this one investor, this one sort of anchor tenant, if they can come into your project, then everything will be fine and you get a no. Right? And so what I would find, or, oh, I can't really get involved, or I'm not really sure, how about go find a couple more customers and then come back and let us know, right?
For everybody starting a new company or business or looking for investors or, or looking. For donors, uh, in a, in a campaign. And I got that a lot early on. Like, you know, I don't think I'm gonna get involved. Let me stay out. That, but, but that saying, and some frequently there were 11 other candidates in the race, right?
And people would say to me, oh, I'm already supporting someone else. And so I would always say, I appreciate your loyalty. Can I be your first, second choice? Remember, like even when somebody gives you a no is how do you find a way that if they change their mind or something else changes with circumstances, that they would still later give you a yes.
And probably having worked in politics too, I think I, I didn't ask elected officials for endorsements because I, I knew. You know, you sort of knew like you're the upstart, you're the, you're the thing I asked regular people for endorsements. Right? And so just also sort of like saying, Hey, I'm not gonna play.
The game that you guys, the big shots, believe is the only way to win. I'm gonna do it, do it a little different way.
And then your framing of you gotta to, to borrow from the Mary Kay way that you reference, you gotta ask, you gotta get 10 nos to get a or nine nos. To get a yes. You know, I've experienced that personally in smaller endeavors in which you describe of where I invite personally, invite.
70 people to a workshop and I get 10 or 15 yeses and I, I feel beat up. Like, wow, I've just completely lost. And I learned the hard way of, I gotta ask this many people before I get a certain number of yeses. And once you start looking at it from that bigger picture perspective, it becomes so much easier.
It's just part of the process. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna ask you, and if you say no, then you're just part of that statistic that's going to.
Yeah. And, and you're in the healthcare space, so I'll, I'll share a story. Senator, uh, bill Frist, who had been the Senate Majority leader and was a, you know, heart surgeon here.
Um, I met with him early on. You know, he is nice enough to take my call and meet and I sort of knew what he was gonna say, but I, you know, went and made my pitch. He wanted to make sure that we talked more about healthcare, and I said to him, I was like, in every single one of these forums, no one asks if no one asks.
The, you know, if nobody in the media asks the question, nobody talks about it. So like, you know, I, I'll try to talk about healthcare and our city's health index, uh, and concerns, but nobody's asking. Um, so very, very on-brand, very Bill, bill Frit in that way. And he said, look, I'm not gonna get involved, you know, I'm not gonna get involved in the race.
And, um, and I, you know, said, I, I respect that. Okay. I appreciate that. And then fast forward, like. I don't know, like three months later I get this text out of the blue, Hey Alice, it's Bill Frist. I'm gonna send you some money, and I, I wanna host an event. I think you're doing great. And so also, like still, when you get the no, you might have planted a seed that somebody watches you and they sort of go, you know, I didn't know how that was gonna go, but come along later.
And at whatever point the no
means.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's, it's no today. It's not No forever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think in the same way of being like, can I be your first, second choice? You know, can we come back later? And versus like a, you know, you are dead to me, the world is over, you said no. Which I think ho hopefully most, most people kind of try to carry on, but.
So speaking of no, fast forward to the end of the race and you finished, as you said, you finished second, so that was a no to being mayor at that time. What's it like the next day? What are some of the feelings and thoughts going through your head?
Well, the next day I had lunch with the current mayor and I would say that is a class, not the one who had just won, but the person, John Cooper was the mayor.
And, uh, you know, he and I spoke on the day of the election. I'm sure he spoke to the, his successor too. You know, just saying, Hey, we're, we're here, we're ready for, you know, continuity of operations. Right? So we, we went to lunch and I would say re remember that, like, remember the day after somebody loses to try to be the person that says you wanna, you know, go to lunch.
I still still have lunch. And he and I are different political parties, um, different backgrounds. But to have the foresight to ask. Yeah. The day after you, you know, some ways it's hard. It's hard to remember. Nathan, sometimes I talk about, I know your boys, you have twins and they're 14,
15.
15. Yeah.
And about to enter their sophomore year.
Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of times I talk about a political campaign. It's probably like a startup too, like a little bit like having a baby, right. You sort of are like. We're pregnant, but we're not telling anybody. We're telling everybody baby's coming, you know? And so, you know, it's sort of there's this day after of like, you gonna have another baby?
Like, when's the next baby? Let's, let's run another campaign. And you don't usually ask a mom the day after she's had a baby, like, you're gonna have another baby.
That's such a good example because in that moment post, it's like you don't, that's not what you're thinking about.
Yeah. And I will, I will say I ran because what you do too, so the first round we had a, a first, there were 12 of us, and then two advance, um, to the runoff.
And so in that first round, that day of the election, I wrote four versions of the speech. It was, we finished first and we're going to the runoff. We finished second and we're going to the runoff. I mean, basically the same. Third was we didn't make the runoff. And then the fourth version was, it's too close to call, but we all have to go home.
You know, it's like, if you sort of imagine that it gets to 11 or midnight and you know, you kind of, kind of like shut the party down at some point and sort of say, we, you know, too close to call that. That was the first time. That was August 4th, September 14th. The, the runoff that morning I was up, up in Goodlettsville.
There was a woman wearing a tiara in her like Miss Tennessee. S outfit, and she was standing on the side of the road by an Alice Rolley for Mayor Sign, and it was this totally. Like unplanned moment where she said, oh my God, you're Alice Foley. I was doing a YouTube live or something to tell all my supporters to vote for you.
Right. It's like you haven't lived until 6 45 in the morning. Someone is like wearing a tiara standing by your side on, you know, good. Let's know. You knew
you made the big time.
Yeah. That was when you knew. It was. Yeah, that was, and so, you know, we went, I was up there at Cantrell's Market, Jimmy Cantrell's, the owner, and he had made biscuits.
He'd been up all morning. His wife told me, she was like, he's been up since like three 30. Megan Biscuits. He's so excited. The media was there, you know, it was all about like, we gotta get everybody going. It's election day. And we did that for till probably about one in the afternoon. And then I, then I came home.
That day I wrote only one version of my speech and it was the version that I gave. But really until that moment, there was no part in me that operated in any other way than a belief that I could win. And that we, our message in our sort of thought process. Deserved to win and, and deserved to sort of lead the city.
But it really, so, so I didn't spend the night, you know, denying the election or I didn't, you know, it's
full acceptance. Yeah, yeah,
yeah.
But in the aftermath, you gave such a, that great metaphor of jumping into the deep end with the question of whether you're just gonna drown, maybe people are there to be spectators, and you have jumped into the deep end.
It's over. I don't know what the right metaphor is. The, the float. You're not there, you know, you're, what is it like to experience public failure like that?
Yeah. Well, I guess it, it is failure. I did feel like I had let a lot of people down, a lot of people who invested so many hours, a lot of people who.
Believed so deeply. But I guess I also think of that phrase, a lot of people use fail as first attempt in learning. Right? I never, for a second, I, I feel like, I don't believe I ever squandered anyone's trust in us and dollars that they spent. I be, you know, I believe that everything that we did, we did the best that we could, but we did.
We came up. Short, I lost. And it was, it was hard. 'cause I did for a while, I think I stayed, I stayed in more, I had this feeling of like, oh, people don't wanna see me because I'm the loser. And again, it was the same way that John Cooper, who was the mayor, said, let's go to lunch. I'm not gonna bring the detail.
Let's just go have lunch. Uh, Ralph Schultz, who was the head of the chamber, he called and he said, Hey, we're we're going to this. Football game. It's a lot of military families. My, my husband was in the Army and he said, why, why don't you come? And I was like, okay, I'll come. You know? And so there are those moments there.
They're the people that sort of say, Hey, you lost, but it, it's okay. And then there's the bizarre moments. Like I, I got, you know, I think I finally hit a wall and caught, caught, you know, crashed, got a cold. I go into. The health clinic and the lady, you know, she's looking at your id, she's writing in your information.
And she's like, you have the same name as the lady who ran for mayor. And I was like, oh yeah, that's me. I'm, I'm, I'm that lady. 'cause you're sitting there like looking miserable and you have a cold. And I, I think I got like COVID and all. I got all these things flu, you know, I just like crashed. Right. And she was so funny.
She was like, oh yeah, we had a song about you Rolli, rolli, rolli. And like we were all making up. Songs and you know, and you're sitting there like, okay, yeah. But, um, yeah, it does, it does change. The Chancellor of Vanderbilt, uh, at that football game, there's sort of two, you know, there are two worlds in this football suite where we were staying.
All the donors, you know, a lot of. Dallas roll donors and they'd say, oh, we're, we had our, your sign in our yard and we loved that, and whatever. And he, and he asked me that. He's like, what is that like to run for mayor of your hometown? I was like, well, you, you'll see it like people come up and they'll, they'll sort of volunteer if they were your supporter and it's really beautiful and, and you, I mean, thank them for their trust that they gave you to vote for you.
Right. And that you'll, you'll see that. But I, I said to him as, but. It's more meaningful when we leave this sort of rarefied place of the sort of high donor boxes watching the football game. And he and I walked out together and I mean, without knowing the lady who, a older lady, a little bit heavier set on the way in, she was taking the tickets on the way out, she was.
Pointing people go this way or go this way. And she stood up and she said, I vote, I voted for you. Don't give up. And that just, it just happened. And I said, and it happens, you know, it happens in the Costco checkout. It happens. Somebody's IDing you at the buy, right? Like you'll, people will say like, don't give up.
And so yes, you fail and you feel like you've failed. But there's all, there's just, I think there's a world of people that are like, she was in it for the right reasons. She was trying to give us a voice, don't give up.
And she had the courage to do something that they didn't have the courage to do, but they admire it.
And in some ways you represent their hope.
Yeah. To say like, it's okay to. Tell the police they did a good job. Like, that's okay. Like you can, you can, like, we can say that. So I don't, yeah, I don't know Nathan. Um, I don't know if anybody listening will change their mind about running for office, but you know, you get, you step back.
Like you either are going to run for office or you are ultimately working for the person. Who you allow to run for office and when, right? Like at the end of the day, a tax policy, school's policy, filling the road. Like you, you can say I don't really work for, uh, I don't really work for the president of the United States, but I, I think a lot of people would say like, Hey.
From January until May 30th, your paycheck is going to the government. So like, so you, I know so frequently people kind of go like, I don't wanna get involved. I need to stay out. I don't wanna be embarrassed. I think more, more people need to be involved.
Yeah, you're, what you're saying is redirect your vision away from embarrassment of your own failure and put your vision on something that's really meaningful to you, and that makes the, the potential embarrassment less important.
Not really relevant 'cause it's about the what you're, what you're pursuing. One thing that jumps out to me about you in your background as a Republican, we live in such a tribalist. Situation where you're either on the blue side, the blue team, and that means you're going to adopt every poli policy position that they promote, or you're on the red team, and that means you're gonna.
Adopt every policy position of theirs. Something that struck me knowing you for many years now is that you adopt positions that don't necessarily just play by the whatever the Tribalist playbook is. For example, Fort Negley was a big cause for you a few years ago. Perhaps I'm wrong. You correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't think of protecting a site against development as a very red team or Republican issue. It might be something, if I had to bet money, I'd bet that maybe it's more of a Democrat issue. So one, how accurate or not am I on that? And then second. Talk a little bit about how you decide to, um, what, what positions are important to you that you want to be vocal about?
Yeah. Well, I think, no, that's a great, great question. So Fort Negley was given to the city, its land. I was called St. Cloud Hill at the time. It was given in 1928 to the city of Nashville, about 65 acres to be a park in the mid. You know, ni in this sort of mid 1960 period, a big section, roughly 20 acres, was set in a lease to a minor league baseball stadium.
Okay. You know, mostly a public good people go watch baseball. Fast forward to 2017, uh, decision, a series of decisions were made maybe 2016. That the land as the baseball team moved away would be, uh, put on a 99 year lease and given to developers to put what was 27 buildings on it. And so for me, this was public land that our own public three, we had this like 380 page plan to play that basically said in the urban core where I live and where Fort Negley is, that there's not enough parkland.
So we have a document that the government has produced that says we don't have enough parkland. We have a city that's growing really rapidly. We have the cost of, um, land going up really quickly. And then you have on the side somebody taking Parkland and saying, let's send it out the side door in a 99 year lease.
To allow 27 buildings to be there. So to me that was less about it being pro development, right? I mean, uh, a hundred, a hundred percent private property rights build, you know, build what you need to build much more libertarian, from my perspective. And both, you know, does market need it? Where's the supply, where's the demand?
This was actually public park. Right. And so to sort of give it out on another use that it wasn't intended to, and it was really the way that it was given out. And, and I call them like the downtown crowd and sort of the Nashville machine, the people that I ultimately ran against, right? They had this kind of like, well, but we gave it to our friend.
And it's like, no. You know, like there's a process and right. As a and as a taxpayer, you could already see it coming. We're gonna give this. Park land away to somebody else on a 99 year lease so that they can build and finance and, and do what they're gonna do. And then we're gonna turn around and read our 380 page plan that says we don't have enough public parkland, and then what are we gonna do?
We're gonna turn around and go buy or eminent domain some other property. Right. So to me that was probably more about. The process. And as I think as a business person, just sort of saying like, this is Parkland. It needs to stay Parkland. So very glad, uh, and met so many people. And I think at the end of the day, most people, red or blue can step back and sort of say.
And it is one of the things that's really infuriating, right? To watch. When I worked for Senator Alexander and ran his last campaign for office, people would say, oh, Barack Obama, executive orders, he's the Imperial President. Look. He thinks he's being a king. Right? Okay. You can look that up 2013. I mean, it was all the messaging, right?
Then Trump becomes the president and it's like, executive orders are great. We love executive orders, like we should do more of them. And that inconsistency, I think for most people is what is irritating. Because if the principle is you support executive orders, then one should support executive orders irrespective of the party in charge.
So the same thing here with Fort Negley. If the principal is. We have a plan. We need more Parkland. This is Parkland, then we shouldn't because it's our friend send the land out the side door. Right? And, and then in terms of deciding what to get involved with, in, in the race that I ran in 2023 for mayor, it was a nonpartisan race, right?
People would say to me, it's non-partisan. And I'd say, well, how come it's non-partisan as long as you're a democrat? 'cause that's really what they meant. They were like, it's nonpartisan. You, you can't run. Like, you know, you're a Republican, you can't run. And I was like, well, how, you know, how come it's nonpartisan as long as you're a Democrat?
And they'd kind of be like, oh well, but it's nonpartisan. I'm like, but that's what you're saying to me. You're saying I am not allowed to run. So what did I try to do? Um, I think from having worked in federal and state government. And, and, and not differently than being focused as a business owner, right?
If somebody says to you, in healthcare, I'm running a healthcare staffing agency for nursing, there's always scope creep. Somebody goes, well, what can't you do? Uh, allied professionals can't you do doctors? What else can you do? And you're like, no, this is what I am doing. This is what I'm gonna be good at.
And so that type of discipline to sort of say like. What is the market the city of Nashville is operating in? It operates in a very red state. Right? And so acting as if the job of the mayor is to be the, the, like the minority position in the state legislature, that's not the job of the mayor, right? So what I would usually say is, I'm not gonna have a pro-life rally or.
Pro-choice rally. And that's what people always sort of like, because that's actually not any part of the mayoral decision process we're, but our job is to have a pro first graders reading rally, a pro filling the potholes and a pro taking out the trash right. And this kind of sense of the restraint to say, what is our job?
And I'll, I'll give maybe one last example because I, I think in this space as, as people think about. Governance and the role of governance and the difference, and when voters make decisions like, I'm going to vote for this candidate based on their political party and not on like what actually the job is.
Right. So that became very clear in Planned Parenthood. They sent out questionnaires to all of the mayoral candidates, you know, and um, I opened the questionnaire and the questionnaire actually said, state legislative questionnaire. That's what it said. And I wrote them back and I said, I'm running for Mayor of Nashville.
It is a nonpartisan race. There's not a place where we as a city are opining on state or federal law with respect to women's reproductive health and reproductive rights. Like this is actually not part of the job and I'm, I'm not gonna fill it out. So then, then never hear back, but you know, the restraint to sort of say, Hey, this is, uh, actually not an issue.
And, and to sort of be brave enough and, and to say that's this is not an area that honestly you all should be involved in. So then fast forward, a newspaper article is written about the 12 candidates and who gets the Planned Parenthood endorsement? Four or five people did. And, and then who didn't? And it said like, Alice Rowley, a Republican didn't get there.
Endorsement and I called the editor, uh, of the paper and I said, you know, Hey Alice Rowley, a Republican didn't fill the endorsement out. 'cause it's actually not, it said state life, legisl legislature. Like it's not, this is actually, you are propagating. A divisive issue that actually should not come to play when it comes to filling a pothole or making sure kids can read like this is not the place for that.
And what was, yeah, it, it was a sort of a fascinating moment to see and to realize actually when you are the story and you actually know what decision you made, and then you sort of see what people assumed the decision was that you made. That's never, that's never written about.
Right. It seems like if you were to.
Recommend how people approach involvement in politics. You're suggesting an issue, specific level of involvement, which? Yeah.
I,
one, is that, is that correct? Is that
picking that up? I, I think that for me, I think understanding what the goal or what, what, what the goal of the position is, or if there is an issue that you care about, then people vote for people, right?
They vote for issues, but really they vote for people, right? So finding somebody who aligns both with, you know, the issues that you care about. But it's probably also recognizing that if your reason for not getting involved is saying I can't find somebody exactly like me. I mean, I've been, I'm going on 23 years being with my husband, you know, like we're not exactly alike, but I love waking up every day with him.
Right. And so like the idea that you're litmus test. For a political person is somebody that I agree with a hundred percent of the time. Like what kind of life I, I guess I sorta, yeah, so, and I think the reason that politics have gotten so divisive and difficult is that the biggest challenge is apathy.
The biggest challenge is people sort of saying like. I don't wanna engage and I don't wanna engage. I don't wanna get involved. So then somebody becomes hyper, like they, they make these ridiculous claims and they do ridiculous things to get your attention. And then we're sort of pulled out of our coma of like, I don't wanna get involved, I don't wanna get involved.
Because of how absurd it is.
And you know, my own firsthand experience with this. In a prior life, I represented a company in our advocacy efforts to secure immigrant visas for nurses from overseas. And so trips to Capitol Hill very quickly disabused me of this idea. Of lofty principle and I came to see what a game politics is of horse trading.
And you know, I certainly had, you know, I was visiting, you know, it could be Marsha Blackburn's office, which many would consider to be right wing. And then I was visiting Dick Durbin's office, which many would consider to be left wing and some of those. Senators and congressmen were more receptive to the ideas that we were championing, and, and others were less receptive and it, it was different parties at different times.
And what I came to really appreciate was that I felt a lot more healthy as an, as a human being championing certain issues instead of. Following the drama that surrounds various parties. And so I think that's a really great way to look at the world is, is what do I really care about and how do I get involved in promoting that?
Irrespective of which, what, how the, the parties are gonna shake out.
Oh no. And be involved. I mean, I would say the best compliment I was, um, just for. Working for a private, a publishing company and uh, you know, you come across people all the time and somebody would say, oh, you worked for Senator Alexander.
I'm, you know, mad about this or whatever. And I'd say, go, go talk to go talk to his office. His office is on West End. Walk in there. You live here. He rep, well, I didn't vote for him. It doesn't matter if you voted for him, he represents you. So one of the guys in that office, they were like, yep, Alice, all these people are mad about something.
They always come in here and they're like, well, we know Alice. And I'm like, yeah, tell him like get in there. Like there's not a, you know, um, yeah. Like that is if you believe that government. So separate from you that you cannot get involved. Like, like again. And I would say you are going to like get involved or you are ultimately working for the people who are running the government.
Like it is a government of the people. For the people by the people. That means do you person have to get involved.
That's a great challenge for, for anyone listening to this. So going back to the aftermath, the. Campaign. So that's not a situation where you can maintain a full-time job and run for mayor.
Now I quit my job, so Yep. I was very publicly unemployed,
so. So now you're very publicly unemployed.
Mm-hmm.
How do you determine what to do next? What was that like?
Yeah, it was, um, I'm very publicly unemployed and I also have been for the last 15 years, the primary breadwinner of our family. So, yeah. So that meant like our kids were on Cobra.
I was on Cobra. You know, we were, this was a hard, it was very, very hard. I would say anybody who's out there listening, who's like in the job searching market, it's hard. So, ju I mean, I, I sort of stood back, um, you know, talked to people, thought about like, what did I have, I had. Actually quite a bit. Support, um, from our state legislature.
And you sort of are thinking like, I've, I've been given this sort of gift, right? Losing to say like, what am I gonna do? I can't say that I, um, I, I, you know, applied for roles. I talked to people, I applied for some roles that were obvious. Totally wrong for me. You know, those kind of Garth Brooks, God's GA greatest gifts or unanswered prayers, those two and a job, the job that I have now, which is being the executive director of the Children's Hospital Alliance of Tennessee, had been occupied for 20 years by a woman that I know and admired.
It happened to be posted in October, and I remember I was in Rome with the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia who are here and, uh, in Nashville. They're headquartered here. I went with one of my supporters on their pilgrimage. She was like, ah, you're gonna win, but if you don't win, we're going to Rome with the sisters.
And I was like, great. Yeah, let's like go see the Pope. I mean, we gotta. Like, I don't know what we're doing. So that's one of the things that I did. I would recommend religious journeys, um, after a major life failure. Put that on your, on your list, especially if you can go with the Dominican Sisters of St.
Cecilia. But we were on this bus driving and the bus turns around to take us to St. Peter's outside of the wall, uh, in Rome. And it turns in front of the Children's Hospital of Italy, which is there. Share shares a wall, and I thought, okay, there's Children's Hospital. I applied for this children's hospital job.
We go in and every day on this pilgrimage, we had a mass, sometimes twice a day. When, when you're with the Sisters, you roll with the sisters, and that day was the Feast Day of St. Jude, the Saint of Impossible Causes, and one of our, uh, most well-known children's hospitals in Tennessee, you know, and I remember thinking like, this is the job I'm supposed to do.
I'm supposed to do this job. So I ended up getting that job. And people ask me all the time, they're like, how'd you get this job? I'm like, very publicly unemployed. I have no idea. But you know, and you're going through that and people are like, oh, it's all gonna work out. And you're waking up being like, it's not gonna work out.
I'm, this is, I can't believe I did this to my family. I quit my job. I like lost. And yeah. So if you're in that moment right now and somebody says to you like, it's gonna work out and you're thinking like they don't know what they're talking about, I don't know. I don't wanna listen to that. It, it did it, you know, it worked out.
So,
and you know, causes are very important to you. That's really coming through in our conversation. What is it about this particular cause that. Compels you to throw yourself into it.
Yeah. Well, so what this became, right, because you do sort of think like, oh, I could be a lobbyist. I could represent all these other people and issues and people could pay me a lot of money to, you know, represent their thing.
But it also is this sort of this moment where you say like, what have I been given? And I would say up on the hill, absolutely. Staffers who live here in Nashville were, you know, working for a super majority legislature. Frequently. They're like, oh, I voted for you. Oh, I watched your debate. Oh, I loved it. So I pretty much can always get a meeting, which is good.
But at the end of the day, you don't wanna wake up and do that unless you believe that the cause is really good. So the children, you know, the Children's Hospital's Alliance of Tennessee, we kind of do three things. One, obviously we want the state to have the best children's hospitals, and that's money that's asking for Medicaid reimbursement rates.
That's looking at. Capacity that's looking at direct grants that we lobby and, and have been successful in receiving to the children's hospitals. So funding o obviously is kind of job one. You can't, there's, you know, no mission without the money to get it done. The second part is we run the quality collaborative for the wor for the state.
So that is basically saying if your child is hospitalized, um. Let's say for an appendectomy, how do we make sure that they don't have a fall or get an infection or, you know, something else if they're intubated things. Central line infections, right? So we've, so we run this beau really beautiful collaborative that's protected under state law and we do not, uh, compete on quality in that work.
And we are able to take the data and sort of say, here's the. Bundle of how to do something really well. Here's where we are as a state, here's where we can do better. So reducing harm, uh, to children is, is kind of the second place. And then the third place, which is most, is the most interesting, expansive, and, and it does, it is, um, a very meaningful place to work is to say, I can want the best children's hospital, but I can want it to be empty.
What does it take if we think of like the root cause analysis of who comes in a children's hospital er, and how could we have prevented that? And that's everything from seat belts, water safety, poison firearms to vaccinations, to routine physicals to asthma, access to asthma medication, right? And that that's engaging.
So yeah, children's hospitals are the best. Place in the world, but they're also the hardest place for families too, right? Like some of the best things have happened for people in their families that are children's hospitals and some of the very hardest. So it's, it's hard to not be engaged because you meet, you also meet so many parents who are called after the death of their child to try to help that not happen to someone else.
And, um, in all different walks of life at all different ways from a mom who. Her child died of Lyme disease. And, and how did we change the state standards to increase education around ticks for little kids? Right. As sort of a, again, how do I stop that from happening to, you know, I think the reason that every car in America now has a backup camera is because a father backed over his 2-year-old and he took on the auto industry to say, I never want that to happen again.
And then, you know, countless, uh, mothers and among them the from covenant. That are up there advocating for not taking guns away. I mean, we're a very red state and that's not a position that is gonna work here, but saying like, how do you store a gun safely? Because we have the third highest rate of accidental shooting of kids in the country here.
So
sounds like a very meaningful initiative.
Yeah. Yeah. So for those who are, I just go like win off, down on.
No, it's totally
everyone. Everyone support your children's hospital. They're good. They're good people there.
For those who are in a place in their career where they're dissatisfied, maybe a little hopeless, what advice would you give them or questions would you ask them?
To help them find their way. Again,
I'm reminded of one of our, our business school professors, right? Hope is not a strategy. Do you remember who was that? Was that Dr. Clawson? I
think
it was Clawson. I think it was Clawson. Is not a strategy, I guess I would say. You know, you, I mean, you step back, right? Think about what either business to, to, that would be interesting to go into or other endeavor, but also like the person who is stopping you is probably you.
And I guess, um, I guess it is, it's like ask the friend or for me, my husband. I mean, I remember there was this moment in the campaign. Like it was just, you know, jokingly, I'd be like, I'm campaign Barbie. Like I would change clothes four times a day and go outside, but inside it's this, our house looked like a total disaster, right?
We have two kids, elementary age. I mean, things were like really rough and I remember looking and being like, I'm gonna give up. Like I just, I can't handle this and this is ridiculous. And he looked at me and there were like piles of laundry on the dining room table and all this stuff. And he was like, go, right now you are deployed.
You are not here. And I remember that 'cause we had. One of his deployments to Iraq was five months long and this, the first part of the campaign was five months long. And he was like, this is how we're gonna think about this. Like, you are not here. You are deployed. You have no responsibilities here. Like, go.
And I realize, you know, that's so hard. That's hard on your. Partner or your spouse, but it's a little bit like the book. It's called, uh, startup Nation, right? The Book Startup Nation. It's probably 15 years old by Dan Sinor about Israel and like about looking at the difference in startups that are successful with people have no backup plan, right?
Like. If you operate with zero backup plan, then you are going to get so much further than if you're operating. Like, if this doesn't work out in six weeks, I'll just drop out. And so like operating with that no backup plan, like I did not think I could not win until four o'clock in the afternoon on the day of the last day that I wrote my speech.
And honestly at the back of my head I was like, well, if I win, that's a lot easier speech. I mean, but I mean, you know, but I would say, yeah, it's like, because if you're stuck where you are. You're probably operating in this, like, like you're operating as if you're living your backup plan. And what, and what if you put, you know, you put yourself out there and say, I am gonna, you know, operate as if.
If there's no backup plan as if I'm deployed, and I think Michael saying that to me, he was like, you're not here. You're deployed. And I was like, I'm not here. I'm not, I'm deployed. I cannot stay here in my house and look with, you know, commiserate about the, uh, disaster that I probably caught.
So just to rephrase, what you're saying is like, do you really want to be known as the person who lived by their backup plan?
Like that punches me in the stomach to hear that. Like the answer is definitely not. The other thing that comes through in that is, again, the dependence on support in a weak moment, someone who's gonna stand and say, I've got you and you've gotta keep going. And that take initiative, take the risk, and people find people.
Who are going to be supportive of, of that just seems like two really prominent themes that that helped you along the way.
And then I also, look, I, I mean, I know I, I remember I was running Senator Alexander's campaign. I had a 1-year-old in the baby land, and there was a young woman on the campaign and somebody, somebody said something like, oh, are you gonna have another child?
And I was like, not, not during the campaign. Like, nope. And she said, she, she said it was very sweet. She was like, oh, well, Mark's, Mark's having a baby mark. Was the political director on the campaign and Mark's wife was having a baby. And I, I remember looking at her and I was like, no, see, like Mark's not having the baby, like Mark's wife is having the baby.
And I know that women can do everything like a hundred percent, but you cannot do everything all at once. And so a question, you know, I think I've right, right now and. Uh, you know, rattling around here in, in Nashville as there's a congressional seat that's just opened up and people are kinda like, you're gonna do it, or whatever.
And it is a really different decision when you have kids to say, I'm gonna go work, uh, down the street in Nashville and do that, or, I'm gonna fly on a plane to Washington. And also saying that like, you know, if you are stuck living in your backup plan at this moment, recognizing that there may be a good reason for that too, but really.
You know, if, if you can pull the support group around and sort of say, can we give this three a three year go? Or what, whatever the, the place is, so,
right. I, I think that's very wise too, is that there are different seasons in life and perhaps you're,
you have an elderly person's you're caring for, you have a child that you're caring for.
I get get that. I mean a hundred, a hundred percent. 'cause you could be listening to it being like, this lady's like ridiculous and she, there's no way. Um, yeah. So.
If people want to keep up with what you're doing, where's the best place for them to follow you?
It's probably on, uh, LinkedIn. I mean, I have, you know, all the other things too, but, um.
I do, I do try to keep the show going. I'm probably not doing it the right way. Uh, but for the most part keep up with responding to things there. Um, just Alice Rowley, friend of Nathan King.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, um, it's been really good and rich to talk to you about your experience and the lessons that you've learned and the mindset that you brought into the effort that you went through in the campaign.
To hear what you're up to now. So thank you for making the time to talk with me today.
Thanks Nathan.