Rooted and Rising: Fifteen Tennesseans Under 50 Who Are Changing Everything

There's a particular kind of stubbornness that runs through Tennessee. It's the same streak that kept mountain communities self-sufficient for generations, that pushed Nashville's songwriters to keep knocking on doors, that convinced a handful of Chattanooga city planners to bet everything on fiber-optic internet when nobody else thought it would work. Call it grit. Call it pride. Call it whatever you want — but it's alive and well in the people on this list.

We spent months talking to community leaders, educators, nonprofit directors, and neighbors across all three grand divisions of the state. We weren't looking for the loudest voices or the biggest LinkedIn followings. We were looking for people doing the work — quietly, consistently, and with deep roots in the places they call home. What we found was humbling.

Here are fifteen Tennesseans under 50 who are reshaping their corners of this state, one decision at a time.

The Builder: Marcus Tillman, 34 — Memphis

When Marcus Tillman came back to South Memphis after finishing his architecture degree, his family thought he was crazy. "There were easier cities to build a career in," he laughs. "But I didn't want to design luxury condos in Atlanta. I wanted to build something that mattered here."

His firm, Groundwork Design Co., has completed fourteen community-owned gathering spaces across Shelby County in the last six years — including a renovated community center in Orange Mound that now hosts after-school coding classes, a farmers market, and a monthly town hall. Tillman's philosophy is simple: buildings should serve the people who live around them, not the other way around.

The Grower: Priya Anand, 41 — Knoxville

Priya Anand didn't set out to become an urban agriculture pioneer. She was a software project manager who started gardening during the pandemic and couldn't stop. Now, through her nonprofit Seed Knoxville, she manages eleven community garden plots across the city, most of them located in food-insecure neighborhoods that previously had no fresh produce within walking distance.

"People think food access is a supply problem," she says. "It's really a proximity problem and a trust problem. We're trying to fix both."

Seed Knoxville distributed over 18,000 pounds of produce last year and recently launched a paid apprenticeship program for high school students interested in sustainable agriculture.

The Storyteller: DeShawn Briggs, 29 — Nashville

DeShawn Briggs makes documentary films about people his industry tends to overlook — elderly Black farmers in Middle Tennessee, Vietnamese restaurant owners in Antioch, Somali refugees building new lives in Clarksville. His short films have screened at festivals from Tribeca to SXSW, but he's most proud of the screenings he hosts in the communities he films.

"The people in my films deserve to see themselves first," he says. "The festivals are secondary."

He's currently in production on a feature-length documentary about the disappearing tobacco farms of Robertson County.

The Reformer: Jasmine Holloway, 38 — Chattanooga

Jasmine Holloway has spent the last decade fighting to change how Hamilton County handles juvenile justice. As the executive director of Second Chance Chattanooga, she's helped divert over 400 young people away from detention and into community-based support programs — mentorship, mental health counseling, job training, and restorative justice circles.

"Locking kids up doesn't make communities safer," she says, plainly. "Giving them something to lose does."

Her organization recently partnered with the county school system to embed counselors in three middle schools, a pilot program that's already showing a measurable drop in disciplinary referrals.

The Connector: Tomás Guerrero, 45 — Shelbyville

Shelbyville has one of the largest Latino populations per capita in Tennessee, yet for years that community had almost no formal representation in local government or civic life. Tomás Guerrero changed that. As the founder of the Bedford County Latino Alliance, he's helped register hundreds of new voters, trained a generation of young Latino professionals to run for local office, and built bridges between immigrant families and the city's established institutions.

"We're not outsiders," he says. "We've been here for thirty years. We're just finally making ourselves heard."

The Healer: Dr. Amara Osei, 36 — Jackson

In a state with some of the worst rural health outcomes in the country, Dr. Amara Osei chose to set up practice in Jackson rather than take a more lucrative position in a major metro. She runs a community health clinic that operates on a sliding-scale payment model and has pioneered a mobile health unit that makes monthly visits to five surrounding rural counties.

"Healthcare shouldn't be a luxury," she says. "And I got tired of waiting for someone else to fix it."

The Educator: Will Cantrell, 32 — Appalachian Highlands

Will Cantrell teaches high school history in Unicoi County, and he does it differently. His students spend part of every semester conducting oral history interviews with elderly community members, archiving stories that would otherwise disappear. The project has produced a 200-interview digital archive that's now used by the Tennessee State Library.

"My kids learn more history from talking to their grandparents' neighbors than from any textbook," he says. "And the community gets to keep those stories."

The Technologist: Keisha Monroe, 44 — Nashville

Keisha Monroe runs a nonprofit called Code South that teaches software development to adults in underserved Nashville neighborhoods — specifically targeting people who've been incarcerated, people experiencing housing instability, and single parents who need flexible scheduling. Her graduates have landed jobs at companies ranging from local startups to Fortune 500 firms.

"Tech isn't a white-collar world anymore," she says. "It's a skill. And skills don't care about your zip code."

The Conservationist: Eli Weston, 39 — Cookeville

Eli Weston has made it his life's work to protect the Cumberland Plateau's waterways. As the director of a regional land trust, he's helped negotiate conservation easements on over 12,000 acres in the last eight years — land that will never be developed, protecting watershed, wildlife habitat, and the quiet that makes this part of Tennessee worth living in.

"Once you pave it, it's gone," he says. "There's no undo button on a subdivision."

The Artist: Lucia Vance, 31 — Bristol

Lucia Vance is a muralist who works exclusively in communities that have experienced economic disinvestment. Her large-scale public art pieces — many of them spanning entire building facades — draw on local history, honoring the workers, musicians, and everyday people who built Tennessee's small towns. She's completed over thirty murals across the state and charges municipalities nothing.

"Art shouldn't be something that only happens in cities with money," she says. "Beauty is a public good."

The Advocate: Raymond Cho, 47 — Murfreesboro

Raymond Cho came to Tennessee as a refugee from South Korea at age seven. Today he runs the state's largest immigrant legal aid organization, helping thousands of families navigate the immigration system every year. He's also a tireless advocate for DACA recipients and has testified before the state legislature more times than he can count.

"Tennessee took my family in," he says. "I'm just trying to make sure we do the same for the next family."

The Entrepreneur: Destiny Franklin, 28 — Clarksville

Destiny Franklin started her sustainable clothing brand out of her apartment with a secondhand sewing machine and a hundred dollars. Three years later, Frankly Made employs twelve people in Clarksville — most of them women, most of them from low-income backgrounds — and ships to customers in all fifty states. Every garment is made from reclaimed fabric.

"I wanted to prove you could build something ethical and still make it work financially," she says. "I'm still proving it every day."

The Organizer: Tasha Bright, 43 — Fayette County

Tasha Bright has spent years fighting for better water infrastructure in rural Fayette County, where some residents still rely on private wells contaminated by agricultural runoff. She's not a lawyer or a lobbyist — she's a former school bus driver who taught herself environmental law, organized her neighbors, and took the fight all the way to the state capitol.

"People think rural communities don't have power," she says. "We just have to figure out how to use it."

The Musician: Jonah Reyes, 35 — East Nashville

Jonah Reyes writes music that doesn't fit neatly into any genre — part country, part corrido, part blues — and he wouldn't have it any other way. But beyond his own recordings, he's launched a free music program for kids in East Nashville that's served over 600 students and placed dozens of instruments in homes that couldn't otherwise afford them.

"Music kept me out of trouble," he says simply. "I figure it can do the same for someone else."

The Planner: Simone Adkins, 40 — Chattanooga

Simone Adkins is quietly redesigning how Chattanooga thinks about public space. As a city planner focused on equity, she's championed the conversion of underused parking lots into pocket parks, pushed for pedestrian infrastructure in neighborhoods historically bypassed by city investment, and helped author a long-range plan that centers climate resilience and affordability together — not as competing goals, but as the same goal.

"A city that works for everyone is a better city for everyone," she says. "That's not idealism. That's just math."

What They Have in Common

Look across this list and a few things stand out. None of these people are doing their work for recognition. Most of them turned down easier paths — bigger cities, bigger salaries, bigger stages — because they felt called to the specific place they came from. They're not parachuting in with solutions. They're building from the inside out, with deep knowledge of their communities and genuine relationships with the people they serve.

That's the Tennessee way, whether we always call it that or not. The state's history is full of people who looked at a problem and decided not to wait. These fifteen are the latest in a long line.

We'll be watching — and celebrating — every step of the way.

Know someone who belongs on this list? Tell us at mytn50.com. We're always looking for the next story.