Hear from Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell!

Freddie O'Connell is the tenth mayor of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.

He served on the Metro Council from 2015 to 2023 representing District 19, which includes the downtown core, Germantown, and parts of North Nashville.

In his time on the Metro Council, Freddie worked to limit the impact of poverty, to strengthen neighborhoods, and to make sure everyone participates as our economy grows. He oversaw an overhaul of the Metro Homelessness Commission as well as an increase in the number of Nashvillians who benefit from property tax freezes and rebates, and passed green energy bills that reduce costs for Metro, ensure cleaner air and water, and increase climate resiliency.

Freddie has served as a member of the Charter Revision Committee, the Planning, Zoning, and Historical Committee, Public Works Committee (Chair), and the Traffic, Parking and Transportation Committee (Chair). He has also served as a member on various special committees that serve Nashville residents including the Nashville Downtown Partnership Board of Directors (Ex Officio), the Central Business Improvement District Board of Directors (Ex Officio), the Gulch Business Improvement District Board of Directors (Ex Officio), the District Energy System Advisory Board, and the South Central Neighborhood Development Corporation Board of Directors.

Freddie has experience in Nashville's software and start-up industry, most recently as Integration Architect for HealthStream. He's served on several non-profit, civic, and committee boards including as Board Chair of Nashville MTA (now WeGo Public Transit), as Board President of Walk/Bike Nashville, the Board of Belcourt Theatre, and the Board of Cumberland Region Tomorrow. As a member of the Citizen Advisory Committee for Metro Water Services, he helped to fulfill a consent decree from the EPA intended to help clean up the Cumberland River.

Freddie served for many years as President of the Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association, where he helped establish partnerships with the Metro Action Commission, Nashville Rescue Mission's women's campus, Buena Vista Enhanced Option Elementary (since merged with Jones Paideia), and MDHA's Cheatham Place. They also secured historic status for the Fehr School building and completed a neighborhood conservation overlay district around Nashville's largest remaining turn-of-the-century workforce housing. As a member of the North Nashville Leadership Council, he advocated for the Sulphur Dell location for the new Sounds Ballpark.

The son of Beatie, a retired MNPS and MBA school teacher, and Tim, a federal civil servant and part-time songwriter, Freddie attended Eakin Elementary, Montgomery Bell Academy, and earned degrees in Music and Computer Science from Brown University.

Since 2007, Freddie and his family have lived in the Salemtown neighborhood. He and Dr. Whitney Boon, a physician educated at Meharry Medical College and now an attending child neurologist at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, have two young daughters, Halley, age 12, and Violet, age 6, who attend Metro Nashville Public Schools. The family shares their home with their adopted chorkie Cocoa Bean, age 3.