About Tennessee

Tanya Freedman, CEO Connetics USA Nursing Agency: Nikki, can you tell us what Tennessee is like? and we can see on the map where it's located.

Nikko Polis, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare Chief Nurse Executive: So one of the things that I really love about Tennessee is that there is so much within our state to do. It is so diverse. So we have mountains in the east part of the state. We have a lot of music in central and in the Western part of the state, which is where we're located. So it's a very diverse state just geographically. It's also a very, very diverse area from a religious perspective, an ethnic perspective, racial perspective. So I think that's one of the cool things you can see by how it's shaped.

It's a long state and so it could be when you look at where we are, which is really in the Western part of the state, one of the really cool things that I think you can see from here is how close we are to Arkansas and to Mississippi and we're really right there on the border where we are a river town.

So we're on the Mississippi. I happen to live downtown, and I actually can walk to Arkansas, and I have across the Mississippi River. So I love that the location is just so great and overall, we still have the four seasons, which I love, but they're much, many beautiful Springs, very nice falls, milder winters, and then a great summer.

So I love all of that diversity that we have in our community.

Well, thank you for sharing. That actually gives us a lot of insight into the state.

In fact, it was kind of interesting. I didn't know this, but Tennessee was ranked third on the U-Haul Growth Index in 2021, which means it was the third most common state or the third state most popular state for Americans to move to last year and I think they're in the top ten in 2020.

As well and I think as we talk today, you'll really see in our area, for example, it's very international. So we have FedEx is here used to be Federal Express. FedEx now is here, which is a very international company. We have an international paper here. Again, international. We have St. Jude. Many of you may have heard of St. Jude, where people literally come all over the world to get care for their children, but it's also a research hospital, and they go all over the world doing research.

So again, we have a lot of things in our community that are international, but it's a great place because there's something here for everywhere, great health care, a lot of cultures here. Again, as I said, just the diversity piece. and so I think it is a very attractive place to come and I think, later on, we'll talk about some of the things that make it a great place to live that make it very livable. Absolutely. Well, lots of good stuff.

Linda, did you know much about Tennessee before you moved there?

Linda Kadiwa, Registered Nurse: No, not really.

I knew about Martin Luther's things associated here and the two places I visited when I got here.

We like, you know, in Graceland better, Linda, but actually we do have a museum here that honors that whole piece of civil rights and it's fantastic so a lot of things like that to do here.

Definitely, a lot to see and do.