Building Careers and Community: The Inspiring Rise of Novonda Lilly

Nashville native Novonda Lilly is a woman of many roles: mother, wife, a human resources executive and entrepreneur, and a newly appointed board member of the Nashville State Foundation. But before that, she was a student at Nashville State, then called Nashville Tech.

Growing up in Nashville, Lilly graduated from Pearl-Cohn High School before moving to Nashville Tech. Once enrolled, she began studying Occupational Therapy, but after a job shadow, she determined it was not the right path for her.

“I quickly learned that I did not want to become an occupational therapist, and that’s why I think job shadowing is very important because it helps you make an informed decision,” Lilly said.

“It was an awesome experience for me because it helped me identify I needed to reevaluate my career and make changes.”

Around that same time, Lilly’s daughter became ill, and due to her worsening condition, Lilly decided to pause her Nashville Tech journey to help care for her.

“My journey to obtaining my degree really was one of pause-stop, pause-stop, in alignment with my daughter’s medical condition,” Lilly said.

During one of those pauses, Lilly worked for Cigna Healthcare, where she first worked in customer service and claims, then in the anti-fraud division before moving into human resources and employee recruiting.

“At that point, I was able to really boost my career,” Lilly said. “I was the person who went out and built relationships with the colleges and did career fairs and all of our networking and our campus recruiting.”

In the early 2000’s, she returned to school, enrolling at Trevecca Nazarene University and graduating with a bachelor’s in human resources management and a master’s in organizational development.

While earning her degrees, she continued to work in recruiting, developing new strategies and approaches to the field.

Her experience led to her becoming the first executive recruiter for a dialysis company, before she was recruited to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2011. She continues to work for Vanderbilt and is now the Director of Talent, Campus and Community Engagement.

In her role at VUMC. Lilly works to build and foster partnerships within the community and across the area’s schools to support students as they pursue careers after graduation.

“I love doing what I’m doing, I’m able to pour back into the next generation of students,” Lilly said.

In addition to her role as a human resources executive, Lilly and her husband, Chris, own and operate Lilly’s Hot Chicken a restaurant in Nashville.

The restaurant came from her husband’s love for cooking at parties the couple would hold and developed into a food truck in 2021 before moving into their current location at the Nashville Farmers Market in 2023.

While the couple each had long careers, entrepreneurship was new to them, and Lilly said they leaned on community programs, like the Nashville Business Incubation Center, to help them get started.

“These organizations can give you a solid foundation to help you plan and implement your vision and can be really impactful,” Lilly said. “They allow you to figure out if this (your business idea) can work.”

One of the biggest messages Lilly says, though, is “most importantly, just do it.”

“I’m a firm believer that if you believe it, you can become it, and you will achieve it. But you’ve got to put action behind it.”

From her job as a recruiter to employing young people in her restaurant, Lilly has spent her career building partnerships and helping grow her community, and in July of 2025, she was named to the Board of Trustees for the Nashville State Foundation.

The foundation is a community-wide effort to help remove financial barriers and empower Nashville State students to help further the college’s mission of providing quality education to every student.

“I’m really excited for the opportunity,” Lilly said. “I’m really looking forward to it and the experience and knowledge I can bring to help make an impact on where we want to go.”

“Coming from Nashville and being an alumna of Nashville State, it’s been a full circle moment for me.”

From her recruiting experience to her time as an entrepreneur, and now as part of the Nashville State Foundation, Lilly’s life serves as an example of the positive impact someone can have when they become a champion of their community, as Novonda Lilly has.