With the energy of five people and an indelible passion for community service, Jill Yochim has a hand in so many projects and groups, it’s hard to keep track. She is an entrepreneur, promoter, event planner, fundraiser, disaster-relief volunteer, head of the hospitality program at her church, and a missionary, and those are just a few of the things she’s doing at the moment. By the time you read this, Yochim may have taken on a dozen more roles. In fact, not long ago, she took on a significant position that was new even for her when she joined the Goodfield team at Livano Trinity — though she is a team of one, in a position so perfectly suited for her, one is enough. In this role, she lives onsite to serve her Livano neighbors by fostering community and providing support.
“I tell people I’m a Jill of all trades and a master of some,” she says, “and my superpower is connecting people to their God-given potential. I love that. I love people. If you put me in a corner and told me I couldn’t go out and engage with people, I would find a way.”
But she also has a backstory, and it makes the present-day happy craziness of her life look leisurely in comparison. One of her first jobs was as a personal secretary to the late NASCAR driver Buddy Baker, leading to other opportunities until she dropped out of college to manage her budding career. She later married musician Sid Yochim, who played with the Allman Brothers Band and the Charlie Daniels Band, and she immersed herself in the music business. Sid and Jill were later joined by their young children, who traveled right alongside them. Along the way, the couple invested in touring vehicles and started a business to help other musicians travel with all their staging equipment.
Even then, it was all about community.
“My kids grew up on the road,” she says. “For a while we were doing 275 dates a year, not including travel, so I homeschooled them. And the cool thing about it was we took them everywhere I was teaching them about in the United States. They’ve been in every state, probably within 50 miles of anywhere on the map. But even then, it was all about community.
“What I loved about it,” she says, “is you become family in the music industry. You travel together, have meals together, do life together.” Accustomed to life on the road, she and the kids later accepted an invitation from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission to do a nonpartisan “I Vote Values” tour to help people register to vote. They appeared on the local news everywhere they went.
When Sid passed in 2011 at just 66, Yochim found solace in knowing what a great adventure they had lived together. “One piece of grace for me is we knew it was coming,” she says. “We lived life. We did everything he hadn’t done, which was very little, like snowmobiling on the Continental Divide. He was so positive, and he said, ‘Honey, you can’t just give up when I’m gone.’” His words gave her strength to return to school to finish her bachelor’s degree and take over the family business before going on to earn an MBA in entrepreneurial management and hospitality and start her own event company. She’s done fundraisers and galas for the Charlie Daniels Journey Home Project, dedicated to serving veterans; Danny Gokey of “American Idol” fame; and the Christian singer/songwriters Keith and Kristyn Getty.
Over the years, Yochim has also became heavily involved in the greater Nashville community in other ways, including joining the fight against human trafficking and getting involved with Pray Nashville, a group of people who visit all areas of the city to pray for the residents and community. Yochim also served on the board of directors for The Nations, contributing to the transformation of a onetime industrial hub into a thriving community and a jewel of West Nashville (read more about the evolution of The Nations in our article State of the Nations).
The fact that Yochim now enjoys a view of The Nations from her new home at Livano Trinity is just one of the ways her new role in the Livano community feels like the right thing at the right time. Goodfield teams live onsite and are dedicated to fostering community by promoting the work of the Goodfield Foundation, a nonprofit 501c3 organization that enriches the lives of Livano residents through dynamic programs, events, and service opportunities. The Foundation also supports residents by providing free access to life-enhancing tools such as Ramsey+, a toolkit that helps people take control over their money with budgeting apps, personal financial coaching, and free audiobooks and courses; and Talkspace, which provides self-guided mental health support for anyone who needs it.
In the few months she has been at Livano Trinity, Yochim has hosted a Tennessee Titans viewing/tailgate party at the pool and personally delivered pumpkins for a Halloween carving contest. She is also brainstorming ways to help her new neighbors update their resumes and online profiles for the new year — complete with new headshots she’s arranged to have done by a professional photographer — empowering everyone to kick off 2024 showing their best selves.
For Yochim, planning these events to build community goes hand in hand with the more personal touches she brings to her role, such as checking in when a resident is having a hard time or helping people make connections that can help them accomplish their goals. “My passion is to see people connected, and for them to know they’re loved and valued wherever they are in life,” she says. “That’s why I see this as such a great opportunity — I love to see people get connected in their life’s passion, and I love to see them be successful. And then I get to celebrate with them when they are. That’s the good stuff in life.”
