Jeff Yarbro

Jeff Yarbro (born February 16, 1977) is an attorney at Bass, Berry, and Sims and the electee for the 21st district Tennessee State Senate seat.

Early Life and Education

Jeff was born in Dyersburg, Tennessee, to parents Paul, a farmer, and Joetta, a sexual abuse investigator for the state. He attended public schools as a child. After graduating from high school in 1995, he attended Harvard University where he earned a B.A. in Government with honors. He met his future wife, Tyler, on the campaign trail, and after the election they both went on to pursue law degrees at the University of Virginia. While studying law he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Virginia Law Review. He was awarded the Thomas Marshall Miller Prize upon his graduation.

Career

Jeff clerked for Judge Gilbert Merritt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He began practicing law at the firm Bass, Berry & Sims in Nashville. He primarily focuses on civil and appellate litigation, consumer financial services, constitutional law, and public contracts. He assisted in implementing the firm’s formal pro bono program. Jeff's work defending an inmate on death row helped gain recognition for his firm by the bar for outstanding service to the indigent.

Political activity

Jeff worked on the New Hampshire Primary, was on the Advance Staff, and was the assistant to the chief political strategist for Democratic candidate Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. He was the GOTV director for Harold Ford Jr.'s 2006 run for the United States Senate. Recently, Jeff served as an education policy adviser to Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and received the PENCIL Foundation's Volunteer of the Year award for 2010-11 for his work with public education. In his first campaign for public office in 2010, Jeff came within seventeen votes of defeating forty-year incumbent Senator Douglas Henry, who retained his seat as the state senator for Tennessee's twenty-first district. He beat Mary Mancini in the 2014 Democratic primary in the 21st district of Tennessee to go on to win the general election to join the 109th General Assembly.

Jeff is a co-chair of Superintendent Jesse Register’s Transformational Leadership Group for high schools in Nashville. He is also one of the founding board members of East End Prep, co-founder of Nashville’s Kitchen Cabinet, serves as co-chair for the Conexion Americas capital campaign for the Casa Azafran community center, and the chair of the Metropolitan Transit Authority board in Nashville.