special section:
bill lee
Thank you for taking the time to share with our
educators today. On behalf of our members, I would
like to say we are grateful you are offering yourself
for Governor. Please share with educators a little about
who you are, and why you are running for Governor. As I started to consider running for Governor, I asked whether
our state could be served by a business leader, with a heart
for public service, and who comes from outside the political
status quo. And after much prayer and reflection, I believe
that’s exactly what our state needs at this time.
I’m a Christian, a farmer, and a businessman. I’ve lived my
whole life on the same farm, just west of Nashville, where
we raise Hereford cattle for customers across Tennessee. I’m
also a licensed plumber, and have led a business, Lee
Company, which we have grown from a local enterprise to
a regional company with 1,200 employees, and hundreds
of skilled tradesmen. To get where we are today, we set
a vision to create a workplace where our employees can
thrive, finding innovative and original solutions to serve
every customer, and to honor God by serving people with
respect, integrity and compassion. We made quite a few changes in public education in
Tennessee the last decade - some necessary, some
deba table. What are we doing right?
Aside from my business, I’ve developed a passion for non-
profit work and service, becoming involved in many great
organizations with missions ranging from international
aid to a men’s prison ministry, among others. I also served
on the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and the
Governor’s Task Force on Sentencing Reform and Recidivism.
I have a deep passion for education, which grew during my
time as President of the YMCA of Middle Tennessee. I became
involved in YCAP (a YMCA community action initiative for
at-risk youth) which gave me the opportunity to become a
mentor for a young man who truly changed my life as we
navigated together the difficulties and dangers of growing
up under hard circumstances in the inner city. One of the
challenges he overcame was escaping a dangerous school
environment, an experience that deeply influenced my
passion for education, and demonstrated the huge impact a
public education can have on a young person’s life.
At Lee Company, I’ve learned that my role as a CEO is not
to micromanage my employees, but to create the conditions
for them to thrive. In the last few years, two critical pieces
of legislation have helped move Tennessee forward towards
creating an environment where our teachers can each
achieve the respect and individual consideration they
deserve.
Updates to our state’s collective bargaining rules brought
new and diverse voices to the table. In doing so, we
acknowledged, as a state, that our teachers represent a
range of unique and valuable viewpoints and that there are
no one-size-fits-all solutions. Teachers deserve choices in
who represents them, and I believe we took a step in the
right direction by giving teachers this choice.
More recently, our state has taken steps to ensure that we
work to improve the culture around education. Personal
safety, bullying, and working conditions are concerns that
deserve primary consideration, and the passage of the
Teacher’s Bill of Rights has helped launch a conversation
that I believe is critical to helping our teachers thrive.
If elected to serve as your governor, I would work hard to
build on these efforts and others to ensure our educators
are treated as individuals, with the respect, reward, and full
support of our state.