Meet Gabby Adams: Our First Community Leadership Fellow
- Paul Whitten
- 6 minutes ago
- 5 min read
By Paul Whitten, Founder of Nashville Adventures
We just did something at Nashville Adventures that I have wanted to do since before we ran our first tour. We named our first-ever Community Leadership Scholarship recipient, and I could not be prouder of who it turned out to be.
Her name is Gabby Adams. She is nineteen, a Middle Tennessee native, and a sophomore at The Citadel, the same military college I graduated from. On August 20 we sat down with Gabby and her family at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, where our company is based, and made it official. A veteran-owned Nashville company handing its first scholarship to a cadet from back home. I could not have scripted it better.
Why a Nashville Tour Company Started a Scholarship
People ask why a walking-tour company gives money to students. The honest answer is personal. I was not the best student in the room. I had to prove myself before anyone took a chance on me. When I got to The Citadel, I earned scholarship support only after I put in the work, and I used the GI Bill to finish what I started. Somebody decided I was worth the investment before I had proven much of anything. This scholarship is how we pay that forward.
We built the scholarship around one idea. Character counts for more than a perfect transcript. We are not chasing the highest GPA. We are looking for young people who lead when no one is watching and who give back to the place that raised them. Our application even asks students a simple question: how have you shown leadership or kindness when no one was watching. The answers tell us everything we need to know.
Grades tell you how someone performs on a test. They do not tell you whether a person will stop to help a stranger, mentor a younger kid, or carry more than their share when a team is short-handed. Those are the traits that build strong communities, and those are the traits we reward.
I wasn't the best student in the room, and somebody took a chance on me anyway. That is the whole point of this scholarship.
Every recipient is named a Nashville Adventures Community Leadership Fellow, and we award one to two of them each year. It is a small program on purpose. We would rather back a couple of students in a real way than spread ourselves thin and turn it into a formality.
Meet Gabby Adams, Our First Fellow
Gabby is exactly the kind of leader this award was built for. She is studying intelligence studies at The Citadel and serves in Army ROTC, on the same path from Charleston into the Army that I once walked. She grew up in Middle Tennessee, and she carries herself with a quiet discipline that you cannot teach in a classroom.
If you know anything about The Citadel, you know it does not hand anything to anyone. Cadets live a structured and demanding life built around honor, discipline, and service. Choosing that path at nineteen says a lot about who Gabby is and where she is headed. She is not looking for the easy road, and neither were the students we most wanted to support.
I keep coming back to what it means for a kid from Middle Tennessee to wear that Citadel uniform. It is not the easy or obvious choice. It says she is willing to be tested, and it says she wants to serve something bigger than herself. That is the whole ballgame for us.
When we met at the Entrepreneur Center, her parents were right there beside her, and you could feel how much the moment meant to their family. That is the part that stuck with me. A scholarship is never really about the check. It is about telling a young person that their community sees them and believes in what they are building. We will share more of Gabby's story in her own words soon.
What Community Leadership Means to Us
Giving back is not a marketing line for us. It is built into how the company runs. Nashville Adventures donates one percent of all revenue, not profit, to veteran causes, and a large share of that goes to Operation Stand Down Tennessee, which provides wraparound support for veterans right here in Nashville. We show up for this city the same way we ask our Fellows to show up for theirs.
A good chunk of our team volunteers on company time, because I would rather pay people to show up for their neighbors than talk about it in a mission statement. We have taught entrepreneurship at a local high school and even put students on a working tour so they could see how a small business really runs.
We also believe giving back should be visible and repeatable, not a one-time photo op. That is why the scholarship is an annual commitment and why our community work is written into the way we operate, not tacked on when it is convenient.
There is a line I come back to a lot: profit is a choice and revenue is a fact. When we tie our giving to revenue instead of profit, we give in a strong month and a slow one alike. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and it is the standard we hope to see in every student we back.
This Is Bigger Than One Award
Gabby is the first Fellow, not the last. Every year we plan to find another young Tennessean who leads with heart and hand them a real vote of confidence. Over time that becomes a network of community-minded leaders who know that a local business believed in them before the rest of the world did. That is a legacy worth far more than any ad we could buy.
If you own a business in this city, consider this your nudge. You do not have to be big to give back. We were not, and by most measures we still are not. We just decided it mattered and made room for it. Pick a cause, make it real, and stick with it. Your city will feel it, and so will you.
Learn More or Nominate a Student
Everything we do, from our tours to this scholarship, comes from the same place: a real love for Nashville and the people in it. If you want the details or you want to point a deserving student our way, visit our scholarship page. And if you are in town and want to see Nashville through the eyes of people who are all in on it, come take a tour with us. Either way, we are glad you are here, and we could not be prouder of Gabby.
