[MUSIC]

Change is coming, oh yeah

Ain’t no holding it back

Ain't no running 

Change is coming, oh yeah!

MUSIC

Change is coming, oh yeah

Ain’t no holding it back

Ain't no running 

Change is coming, oh yeah!

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

This is Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers from Environmental Defense Fund. I’m your host, Yesh Pavlik Slenk. For the better part of the last decade, it’s been my job to help students use their talent and passion to get experience and jobs that serve the planet.

I’m so excited to bring you my conversation with Kameale Terry. 

To set the stage, I’m going to let her show you why you don’t understand what charging stations actually do. And why that matters. 

She says most people, including electric car drivers, think chargers are giant electrical outlets.

I did too. But they’re not.

Kameale Terry 

They're really complex computers, right? When we talk about smart charging, network charging, each of these charging stations have certain protocols in regards to knowing who you are as a driver. 

They’re smart devices that we've deployed all over, literally everywhere. And with that comes new complexities.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

But when companies first started building charger stations, it wasn’t clear who would be in charge of repairing them. And with the Biden administration spending more than 7 billion dollars to roll out charging stations nationwide, we’d better fix that problem, fast. Enter Kameale and Evette: ChargerHelp! partners with EV companies to fix their charging stations. It’s not easy. When a charger station breaks, it could be an electrical issue, or a software glitch, a downed cell network….or a wasp nest!

Kameale Terry: 

We had a company recently that had us go out to a site because they said the station was broken. When we got on site, we tested the station with our car and the station worked, but we kept getting deployed out to this one location because they kept getting reports. 

So my technicians who are brilliant. (And this is actually my New York tech. So shout out to Jerry.) He was like, you know what, I'm gonna check, to see if I can get more information on the people that are reporting these issues. Come to find out the car that was being reported all of the time with these different drivers was only one specific type of car. This instance, this was a Ford Mach E. 

And so, we've seen this happen before, where if a car gets a certain firmware update and it can sometimes stop it from properly working with a certain station. So is the station broken? Like kind of, not really -- you know, it's just new types of problems. It's literally like we had to do some investigative work. This one specific car isn't working on this one specific station due to software. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Well, and you're making me think it's complicated because maybe there's a mechanical issue. Maybe there's a software issue. We have all these different car manufacturers, all these different charging station manufacturers who are all working together, but not together. That's fascinating.

Kameale Terry

One thing that I'll say is that we have a cool opportunity now to just one, make sure that drivers don't get to a space where they're about to run out of electric fuel. And on the other end, how do we make sure the stations never break? Right. And that's what ChargerHelp! is doing by gathering really cool data to ensure that these stations never break down. So you don't even have to have that experience.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Kameale is an unlikely candidate to start this company. In a former life, she was a banker – a banker with a brain for solving complex problems. She learned how to troubleshoot charging stations when she took a job with an electric vehicle software company called EV connect. 

Imagine, it’s 2017. You’re driving your Chevy Bolt. You’re on your way to drop off your pup at doggy daycare before work and your battery’s low. 

You have an app that tells you where the nearest station is but when you get there, it’s broken! Your dog is in the back seat barking, it’s really hot out and you’re going to be late for work. Ahhh!

Then you see a 1-800 number on the charger station. So you dial and you hear…

Kameale Terry:

Hi!

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Kameale!

Kameale Terry: 

I started off as driver support. So literally when drivers were stranded, like I was the person they got to yell at.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Oh!

Kameale Terry: 

I got to, you know, receive that energy, allow them to unburden their frustrations. And I was there for them and I was like, we're gonna figure this out. 

I mean, people have range anxiety already. And then two, typically what we saw is that the stations will present themselves as online. So this person who may be at the end of having fuel essentially gets to somewhere that they thought they were gonna be able to get fuel. And in actuality, the station just isn't working. So it's a different level of panic. And rightfully so. 

And another thing is, early on a lot of the early EV adopters, car manufacturers, weren't really even telling them how to charge their car. So sometimes I would just get a call from a frantic person being like, I don’t know if my car is charging. And I'll go on Reddit. And I'm like, let me look up with the BMW i3 or whatever it looks like when it's charging. And I'm like, “Do you see the three dots?” And they're like, “Yeah, I see the three dots!” So it was people being stranded and also just people just not knowing what to do, period. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:  

Sometimes, she’d try to get her company’s electricians to fix the software problems. 

KamealeTerry: 

The issues weren't electrical. So I would reach out to my electricians and like, Hey, can you take like a laptop, a Cat5 connector? And can you update this code on this charging station? And my electricians were just like, “Girl, no, that's not what we're paid to do.” And so I saw there was this very interesting problem. I'm not really finding the right people. At one point, we're like, do we just call the geek squad?

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:  

It’s like, would you call an electrician to fix your computer? No… but who else is there to call? To Kameale, it seemed EV makers hadn’t thought about the chargers having issues. 

Kameale Terry: 

I think as an industry, they're smart devices, they're gonna tell us when it's broken. And they're not gonna break. Why would we need money for that? They're just gonna work. And so that kind of hit me. 

And so it would be crazy if I could teach people how to do this. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

So Kameale started writing down all the problems she was seeing and how to fix them. Ultimately, she was promoted to director of programs in the customer service department at EV Connect. 

But starting her own business? That was a whole other matter. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Yesh here, talking with Kameale Terry, co-founder of ChargerHelp! 

Kameale’s road to the world of electric vehicles was accidental. She had a good job at a bank in Philadelphia until her family needed her back in South Central LA.

Kameale Terry: 

So my mom's always had cancer since I was ten or eleven.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

I'm sorry.

Kameale Terry: 

And it would go in and out and in and out. And then she had got really sick. I had to leave Philadelphia to come back to LA. And then when I got to EV Connect, I was literally just looking for a job. There's like some people there, we call tree huggers, die-hards. And I just never had been taught anything about the environment. So I just needed to supplement some income. My mom was tired of me staring at her and just taking her to doctor's appointments. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

She’s like, get outta here. 

Kameale Terry: 

She was like, I understand you're here to help, but like go do something. I'm like, okay.

So I really didn't know. I'm from South Central Los Angeles and I had no idea how the environment was impacting people in my community. Even with my mom. There were so many people in my community that had cancer, you know? And now the school that she worked at, it was a lot of teachers there and they think that there was some type of environmental stuff there. Almost twenty different teachers got cancer, you know? And so I think when I got to EV Connect and just started to really look at just these cars are killing us. And disproportionately people in my community and nobody's really talking about it.

It gave me an outlet to try to do something positive, and then also incorporate more people. Because there were so many people in my community that really didn't know anything about how the environment was impacting them. My co-founder - both her parents passed away from lung disease stuff. And so, the more people I could show, Hey, we can be a part in a positive way. And then also bring light to how this thing is like impacting us. I think that was the healthiest thing for me to do during that time period. And to see my mom see her be able to watch me build something -- she passed last year in June -- but she was able to see me build a company, see me like teach people about this stuff. And that just made me feel really good.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

I'm so sorry about your mom, but I'm so glad that she got to watch you build this thing and turn something in her life that was really sad and really unfair and unjust into something really positive. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Family’s important to Kameale. When deciding to leave EV Connect and start ChargerHelp, she had a role model -- well kind of -- in her dad. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

I've actually read that your dad was also an entrepreneur. Was he a big influence or inspiration as you started this business?

Kameale Terry: 

I always say it's the opposite. My dad's like, -- watching my dad build a business, I was like, “I'm never gonna build a company”.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Oh no!

Kameale Terry: 

Because it's hard! We say what times are good is good when it's bad. It's pretty horrible. You know? I think that my dad was an inspiration in the space that he was like -- I have three brothers, I'm the only girl, but I'm the oldest. And my dad never put my gender as a thing that would stop me. My dad was always like, you're a Terry, you could do whatever you want. My dad was like,shoot for the moon, because even if you don't make it to the moon, at least you'll land on the mountain. My brothers and I, we laugh all the time. We're like, okay dad! But he was very much, so of this mindset that there is no excuse for, for you not achieving what you wanna achieve. It's just dependent upon how hard and smart you wanna work. But you just gotta go. That's how we were brought up.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

It’s not just her family that inspired her to start a company. Growing up in South Central LA, she was surrounded by entrepreneurs.

Kameale Terry: 

Where I come from, having a small business or what we call a side hustle or whatever, entrepreneurship is very natural for us. Whether you go and be a barber or a beautician, or even as a handy person, or you sell at the food cart. So even as a kid selling stuff outta your backpack. Finding ways to make income is very natural for folks in my community. So I think that doing the leap wasn't hard.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Scaling it? That’s another story. 

Kameale started her new company simply. She wrote a training program.

Kameale Terry: 

I just started to write down, how do you fix the station? What are things that you need to look for? What are some of the issues? And then the LA Cleantech Incubator - crazy enough - bought a license to my curriculum. I said, OK, we're off to something here.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

That was cool…but a curriculum alone wouldn’t solve this problem, especially across the whole country. Kameale would need workers – hundreds or thousands of really good ones – and money. To get funding, she would encounter one requirement she hadn’t thought of.

The LA Cleantech Incubator, known as LACI, inspired Kameale to apply for funding from a global cleantech organization called Elemental Excelerator. The hitch? To apply, Kameale would need to find a co-founder. 

At LACI, people kept advising Kameale to talk with a woman named Evette Ellis.

Kameale Terry: 

Somebody said you should talk to Evette. So - Evette -- we had just met. And I was like, “Girl, like, I need to put your name down. And I was like, you could be my co-founder on paper.” Cause mind you, I didn't know anything about startups for real. I need a co-founder, let me just put your name down. I was like, I already quit my job. So you don't really have to quit your job. Just do it for a year with me. At first she was like, “No”. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Uh oh.

Kameale Terry: 

Yeah. And Evette’s very practical. She's also 10 years older than me. So she always thinks I'm some crazy millennial, which, that's fine. And then she ended up thinking about it, talking about it with her husband. And she came back to me and said, yeah. But I'm very much a faith type person, you know? And I just feel like that was such a God moment for us because I didn't even know the extent of her work with workforce development. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Evette’s work background would be key to ChargerHelp!’s success -- more on that later.

Kameale Terry: 

I try not to think about it because it makes me very emotional because that's crazy. When stuff like that aligns in your life, wow. That's why I can't really have no regrets about this. I'm so privileged and so lucky, that it’s ridiculous.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

I am so moved by that. You say you're holding back tears, I'm full blown. 

Kameale Terry: 

I don't think I've had doubt that it wouldn't work. More so what I think about a lot is this saying, for who much is given much is required. ChargerHelp! has been very privileged to have a lot of opportunity and be put in really great places. And I always just think about, how do I make sure that I can keep showing up to properly do it?

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

There would be the challenge of scaling the company. And that would mean finding investors. If the idea of starting a business came naturally to Kameale, raising millions didn’t come naturally to her or Evette.

Kameale C Terry: 

I think a lot of times what we don't -- from my experience -- we don't necessarily know about raising capital or about a cap table or about investors. I remember when I told my co-founder we were gonna raise money and she was like, “We're gonna have to pay this back?” I said, “Girl 2.75 million? No we ain’t have to pay that back!” 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

No

Kameale Terry: 

I mean, we gonna make money, so we could -- it's an investment, but no, we don't gotta pay it back. But just stuff like that, we don't know that part. But like starting something, being resourceful, being tactful, those are things that are just how you grow up.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

I just had to ask Kameale about raising millions of dollars to get ChargerHelp! off the ground.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Becoming an entrepreneur, as you've mentioned, it's not easy. Some days are up, some days are down. And you've had to hustle and get millions in funding. And ChargerHelp! is a Black and women-owned business and that's still unfortunately rare in the entrepreneur space. And it's especially difficult for entrepreneurs of color to get funding or they're just not as well represented. 

Kameale Terry: 

Mm-hmm.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Tell me about your journey to get funding.

Kameale Terry:

When we first went out to raise, it was during the George Floyd movement. And it was interesting because you got a lot of interest because, one they're like, two Black girls like fixing charging stations. What y'all know about charging stations? So you just had a lot of people that were like checking a box, that they just wanted to have a conversation with you because you're just this weird thing that they wanna check out. 

So it was interesting because we had to navigate a different set of waters where you're fascinated with me being Black. Thank you. But do you know anything about charging stations? Or software? Have you built a company before? Can you write a check this quarter? So it forced us to really narrow it down with investors. So that's another thing where I feel very privileged. 

I know it's not like that for every Black female owned company. And also how do I show as a good example, that once you got past me being a Black woman at the end of the day, I'm a phenomenal CEO and I build dope companies and you should also look for that in other Black female CEOs and know that that's a thing. 

So that's when I talk about that pressure of not failing, it's so real because I know that we were lucky -- to be so honest -- we were lucky that people took a call with us and that they decided to invest in us because it doesn't happen all the time. And we're not unique. Like there's very capable Black female founders out there. We were just really lucky.

And so for us, we look for investors that one, yes, want to make money, but also understand that our actions -- whether you think you're saving money or taking a shortcut here, actually has a cost and do you understand that? Because I think that as a nation, if we don't start thinking about things in that way, we will continue to think that these multi-billion dollar companies that pay workers $10 is good and that's good business. It's not. 

It's not because folks having to take care of folks that don't make a lot of money, it falls back on to the community and it doesn't allow for a sustainable human race, right, when we don't treat people well. So we try to think of those things in a holistic way and then have investors that understand that and honor that and help us figure out how do we build a great company from that viewpoint. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

In March, 2021, a handful of organizations invested almost $3 million dollars in ChargerHelp. They valued the company at more than 8 million dollars. Kameale says they expect to be fixing charger stations in all 50 states by the end of this year. 

But none of this would have been possible without the linchpin to their entire company: a deliberate and diverse workforce development program. 

If you’re looking for a green job, you may feel like the number of jobseekers vastly outnumbers job openings. The picture is far more complicated but the truth is the need for green workers of all kinds is growing SO fast. 

In 2021, less than 1% of hiring involved green jobs, according to the LinkedIn 2022 Green Skills Report. But in five years, the report said, there will be more demand for green workers than exist!

Yeah, there’s always been talk of reskilling coal miners and oil rig workers to build and maintain wind turbines and solar farms. But so far, reskilling the workforce  – well, it’s been more talk than action. 

It’s an issue that Kameale and her co founder, Evette, take personally. To expand, they would need to find and keep a workforce. That would have to be the heart of their company.

Luckily, Evette worked for the Department of Labor for eleven years. She would apply her expertise to the problem. And in a short time, ChargerHelp! would partner with career centers and technical colleges to find people ready to work and eager to learn new cleantech skills. 

The top qualities they hire for? Quick thinking and unflappability. 

Kameale Terry: 

When I thought about fixing stations, it is not just you go swap out a connector. It's problem solving, right. And it's problem solving with a little bit of information and a little bit of resources. And so when I think about people that are naturally good at these things, I think about folks from maybe communities and markets that haven't been tapped into before.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

She thought back to all those people in South Central LA who instilled her with an entrepreneurial spirit. All those folks with side hustles. 

Kameale Terry: 

Hey, there is an untapped workforce that are naturally good at problem solving. And then in that same breath, people have to be a part of this green revolution, whatever we're doing, people have to feel a part of it. We can't bring solutions to people. They have to feel a part of it. And that's how you drive change. And we see it in our technicians today. 

We had a set of technicians that immediately bought electric vehicles. Knew nothing about electric vehicles before they started working for us. We gave them a good paying job and some information and they took the choice to go buy an electric vehicle. That’s a big deal to me. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Getting people involved is absolutely crucial. Can you take me through the day of one of your technicians?

Kameale Terry: 

Yeah I'm gonna send this to Jerry. Jerry's gonna be so embarrassed. Jerry, he's from New York and he's Brooklyn all the way. And then he was the one that actually figured out that issue with the charging station that was working, even though it kept getting reported. So he was part of our first cohort. We went to recruit 20 people. We had 1600 people apply for this spot.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Wow.

Kameale Terry: 

I know, that's all my co-founder, bless her heart. He used to work on the scooters. when the scooters were broken or whatever, he would go fix the scooters. And so for Jerry, because he covers a large portion of New York, the day before he'll get whatever work orders he has to do. So how do we put on our thinking caps and how do we break down where this failure might be happening in this ecosystem of data exchange? 

So that's kind of his world where he might be working with his hands in one aspect, but in another aspect he might be having to really deeply problem solve some software issues and then getting that data back into our platform. So that way our system is learning faster, faster. So we see this issue again, we can suggest a resolution faster. So that's kind of the day, it's cool for some people who like to work with their hands, but also like to be technical. And we're finding out that there's a lot of workers out there like that.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

For instance, they hire former oil rig workers because they get how important safety is.  They also hire people from the cable TV industry, because they’re great at talking with upset customers. And Kameale says, they hire people who love working with their hands – but who have virtually no experience. Remember, when Kameale first started thinking there had to be a way to solve the charger station problem. Well, she created a curriculum. Kameale may be a CEO now, but in her heart, she’s a natural trainer.  

Kameale Terry: 

We have a subset of technicians that my number one tech, a young lady called Heaven, out of California. 

Kameale Terry: 

And Heaven is probably twenty three, twenty four. She wanted to play basketball overseas. I think she ended up like tearing her ACL before she got recruited to go out. And she was just at home and her aunt or her grandma saw Evette and I on TV talking recruiting. And they were like, you need to go do this. Heaven is our number one California tech. And shout out to my other California techs, but Heaven really is. And Heaven has no experience whatsoever. 

And she's actually looking at becoming a trainer to train other technicians. But she just really likes being out in the field. She likes the complexity of problems that she sees and just kind of having a little bit of ownership over your time, you know? So yeah, so we have people that are heavily skilled that we’re reskilling, but then we also have people that are just like, I like using my hands and I like solving problems and I like driving around. And I'm like, you can work here. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Yeah. Welcome to the team. 

Kameale Terry: 

Welcome to the team.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Kameale and Evette think a lot about who gets to participate in the green workforce. And how they should be treated.

Kameale Terry:

We have a level of excellence at ChargerHelp! and because it's always been so competitive to be a part of the team. What it looks like for us is really getting creative on how do you scale a workforce across the United States in two quarters, right? And how do you do that through partnership and how do you do that with the equity lens? 

So to us equity, how we pay our workers, how we move, how we do business deals, to me, this is how you do good business. And so for instance, when you saw certain things happen to companies that weren't paying workers well if we were able to actually calculate how that impacted their revenue growth, would they actually be as profitable as they are? 

So when I talk about revenue growth, we don't take into thought that maybe I'm saving money by being not a great employer right now. But in the long run, there is a cost to that. There is a cost to not paying people well, whether it's directly to the growth of your company or to society as a whole.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Of course, they want to keep technicians for as long as possible. But they also understand as people gain more skills and experience, they may want a new challenge. Kameale considers this a success.

Kameale Terry: 

As a business owner, it's hard because that's retention and I'm like, “ah, I gotta go find somebody else.” But in that same breath, folks weren’t looking at the same people, that I went out and through a workforce development center got, you know what I mean? The same people. And we just highlighted things that they were good at and now they're being marketable. That's really cool. It sucks as a business owner in the moment because, dammit that was expensive. 

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

Yes.

Kameale Terry: 

But now we have to just rethink about like, how do we measure retention? These are folks that are able to purchase a home now, right. Are able to do these things they never thought they could have done before and are exposed to an industry. Like how cool is that?

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

I love that. They truly are building a green workforce not only for ChargerHelp!, but for the larger clean tech economy.

Kameale encourages anyone looking to get a job in EVs or any other planet-saving career, to simply learn how to manage projects.

Kameale Terry: 

I don't think that we have a hyper focus on project managers, the way that we need to. We're building infrastructure. The fact that we're just now understanding why charging stations are broken is a big issue. And I think that if we had stronger project managers and if we were looking at the full deployment, not just getting stuff in the ground, but the full deployment, we wouldn't be where we're at today. 

And now we're playing catch up and having to undo a lot of stuff. So I tell everybody, get your project management certification. It is gonna make you dangerous out here and that's what we're gonna need for the future.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Companies like ChargerHelp! give me so much hope. They are scaling! It’s exactly what we need. 

Kameale Terry: 

And now every time I go check, we got checks from people and I was people are really paying us to do stuff. This just blows my mind though. Because it was so long where we were just really just hustling, trying to get contracts here and there. And now we have a lot of contracts and like people pay us all the time. This is wild, the City of Seattle just sent me a check. It literally blows my mind.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

It is so awesome to me, that ChargerHelp! has such a holistic look at entrepreneurship. I feel if more businesses had this mindset, we wouldn’t be in the dumpster fire we’re in with the climate crisis. 

But running a rapidly growing business like this is a lot of pressure.

Kameale Terry:

I think ChargerHelp! is gonna be very successful, how we get to that success and how do we stand by our values is just, that's gonna be the part that I just don't ever wanna forget, you know? And I don't ever wanna disappoint people or let people down. And so I think about that a lot. I always say just don't screw it up, Kameale. That's all you gotta do. Just, don't screw it up. I'm always thinking about ways to not to mess it up.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

She’s got hundreds of people counting on her, investors who need returns, not to mention creating a blueprint for scaling a greentech workforce. 

I wondered how she handles it all.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

You said at the beginning that right now, this moment for you is pure insanity. What keeps you up at night?

Kameale Terry: 

I mean, to be honest, nothing is really keeping me up at night. I think that once when my mom passed away, I think when you have somebody that's really close to you pass away, it just puts so many things in perspective. And at the end of the day, if Chargerhelp! fails tomorrow, we still did something pretty freaking cool. 

To this date, we've trained over 500 people across the United States in communities that knew nothing about EV charging. I've raised a lot of money past that 2.75 million, And I was able to identify a real problem. So I just try to keep those things in perspective.

I think there's so much opportunity to create solutions right now. And there's a lot of incubators and accelerators and there's a lot of money out there. I think that was one thing I never really understood, the idea that there's just so much capital out there, there is a lot of opportunity for good sound business ideals. 

And I would say just take a bet on yourself if you can. Because the money is out there, people are out there that want to help. It's gonna be hard work, but we need more solutions. And so I just want to encourage people to not get stopped in that thinking, that this is impossible. It's not impossible. You know, you can do it.

Yesh Pavlik Slenk:

Now it’s time for Ask Yesh, where I help you with your biggest green career challenges. I want your questions!  Write to me on Twitter, at Yesh Says with the hashtag Ask Yesh. 

I caught up with one of our Climate Corps fellows right after her fellowship a few weeks ago. She’s finishing up her grad degree and is fielding offers from two companies. Both jobs are sustainability focused but they’re at companies that have two completely different cultures when it comes to climate change. One has sustainability baked into the company ethos -- it's a shared value across the business and the role would be driving the company to meet their ambitious net zero goals. Wow, chef’s kiss!

The other, has newly begun their sustainability journey. I’m talking, low hanging fruit like LED upgrades in the warehouse. The role would have a lot of opportunity to make big impact but she was anticipating much of her role would also include making the case for going green to her colleagues and to leadership, constantly. 

The offers are about the same, moneywise, and both roles are remote. 

What it boils down to for this job seeker is the anticipated emotional experience. Do I want to go somewhere and work with people who quote, “get it”? Or do I want to go somewhere I’m charged with changing hearts and minds?

In the end, I encouraged her to work for the company just getting started on their journey. Yes, there will probably be more conflict in her day to day. And yes, she’ll likely need to spend more time than she’d like bringing people along. But the planet needs people who are willing to meet folks where they are, get them on board and tackle big challenges.

I also shared a piece of wisdom I recently heard from a colleague. And that’s to: “Think of each job as a tour of duty. It doesn't have to be your whole career. You can change as your skills and your life stage change. What’s important is to get in there and do as much as you can.” The planet needs you. 

And that's it for this episode. Make sure you follow Degrees to catch the rest of this season where we will educate, entertain and energize you for the fight ahead. And of course tell you where to find the jobs that are growing and how to get them. 

On the next episode of Degrees we look at fixing our unsustainable food system, with one of the nation’s preeminent food policy journalists, Helena Bottemiller Evich. She’s an award-winning reporter who spent nine years covering food for Politico. Now she writes FoodFix, a newsletter avidly read by everyone from White House staffers to Jose Andres. 

Until then, check out our Green Jobs Hub! We’ve gathered all the resources you need to jumpstart your green job career search.

Degrees is presented by Environmental Defense Fund. Amy Morse is our producer. Podcast Allies is our production company. Tressa Versteeg, Elaine Grant, Matthew Simonson and Rye Taylor worked on this episode. Special thanks to Alyse Rooks. Our music is Shame, Shame, Shame from my favorite band, Lake Street Dive. And I’m your host, Yesh Pavlik Slenk. But the foundation of the show, dear listener, is you. Stay fired up y’all.

[MUSIC]

Change is coming, oh yeah

Ain’t no holding it back

Ain't no running 

Change is coming, oh yeah!

Yesh Pavlik Slenk: 

And that’s all for this episode of degrees

Make sure to listen and follow on --  Oh wait, I am starting at the bottom. Bluh-Uh. alright. [laughs] 

Ba-doo-doo. Okay. Here we go, here we go! [laughs] We have fun.

Degrees is produced with Podcast Allies. The artwork is by illustrator Bee Johnson. Degrees theme music is by the amazing band Lake Street Dive. We love their powerful video and song Making Do, all about climate change.