Equity in Energy: Center for Energy Workforce Development

The "Equity in Energy" event adopted its keynote address' title "Beyond Ordinary" as its theme. A panel discussion among four diverse subcontractor leaders was inspiring as well. The CEO of Trice Construction, the Presidents of APC Construction and EVS, and the Business Development Director of Blaze Contracting all brought unique perspectives on how they and similar companies nationwide can take on increasing roles in the energy transformation.
 

PUF's Steve Mitnick: What do you do at the Center for Energy Workforce Development, or CEWD?

Cornell Johnson: I am the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and we're unique that none of our efforts are focused internally as an organization. All our efforts are focused externally on the entire industry.

Success is measured by industry impact. I have the privilege of interfacing with all the chief diversity officers and practitioners from across the energy sector for macro solutioning and maximum impact.

I love it. We're not bogged down to one vertical. As an organization, we're agnostic to the verticals of energy. We represent and service gas, power, electrification, offshore wind, RTO ISO, nuclear, contractors, you name it. We play with all of them.

We are the workforce arm of the entire alphabet soup of energy policy associations, from EEI — with whom we are in residence — AGA, APPA, NRECA, APGA, DCA, EPRI, NEI. We are the connective tissue of the industry.

PUF: What's the metric of success for CEWD? In your job, how do you know you're having an impact?

Cornell Johnson: It's workforce development numbers. Number one, IIJA tells us that there are 9.8 million jobs and a little over five million unemployed people. There are almost two jobs for every unemployed person.

Closing that gap and creating a skilled and diverse workforce is how we measure success. Also, getting energy companies across the industry to be more intentional with how they interface with the workforce board systems that are in place.

Workforce development can no longer just be something in talent acquisition. It requires strategy and tactical collaboration. It's moving the needle on those things.

Then our diversity initiatives. We are pulling the levers on making the industry a sustainably equitable home for everyone from GEDs to PhDs by partnering with community-based organizations like the National League, UNIDOS, AABE, and more.

PUF: Today, I keep hearing this word, intentionality. Give a definition for it.

Cornell Johnson: It's not going to happen by accident. We go out, we do it, and we make it happen.

We are taking specific steps for a specific outcome. We have to go beyond outputs and move from outputs to outcomes.

The output is the effort that we're putting in. Our output is, we put two thousand people of color through this line worker program as an initiative to make energy careers forward facing to communities of color.

Great, now what? What's the outcome? Where is the economic mobility? What's the sustainability? What's the driver we are putting on the community? Focusing on those outcomes is what we're doing.

PUF: When you get the chief diversity officers of the utilities and other companies together, what do they say are their biggest challenges, frustrations, and successes?

Cornell Johnson: We have our DE&I Forum coming up May 9th and 10th in Washington D.C. at EEI where CDOs will come together to discuss just that. We can't talk about challenges relevant to DEI practitioners, and not acknowledge the political climate that we're in constantly challenging the work, impact, and altruism of DEI work.

Depending on what state you're in, you can't even call it DEI. You have to get creative and call it organizational health, corporate culture, or corporate social responsibility. Political vitriol is a challenge, especially depending on where you're trying to make an impact geographically in the country.

While DEI is a business imperative supported by data, it's also the right thing to do, making it equally important as an altruistic investment by the organization. We've come exponentially further, and this industry has a phenomenal journey that should be told.

But if we look back historically, this energy was comprised of legacies like the B.U.D.S. network — meaning your brothers, uncles, and dads paved the way.

We are intentionally creating on ramps to energy through strategic partnerships with, and programs like, the Urban Energy Jobs Program, Alumbra, BHE/IBEW Stronger Together, and so much more.

PUF: The CEO of PSEG, Ralph LaRossa, used to say in speeches that a few years ago, they measured new hires and found some huge percentage had relatives already in the company.

Cornell Johnson: That's historically how the workforce has been fed, by legacies like the aforementioned B.U.D.S. network. Breaking some of the echo chambers of that has been a challenge but we've come so far and will only go further as a collective industry that is home and welcome to all.

Getting utilities to adapt and be comfortable with change, because historically the utilities are conservative. They move a little slower, and don't want to misstep. Sometimes being conservative makes us safer and predictable — which isn't always bad.

But we're in a new day and age, and we are encouraging — and helping — them to adapt some of these new policies, trends, and ways of not only doing work but approaching workforce development and community collaboration. We've come so far.

PUF: Are there best practices?

Cornell Johnson: Yes. At our DEI forum on the first day of this conference, is a closed-door meeting for chief diversity officers to talk in confidence in a safe space, with no cameras. It's about best practices, what's going well, where we are failing, and what are the pain points?

But to have peer-level conversations, confidence, and confidentiality at the same time is paramount. Yes, there are best practices, but they can ebb and flow. Again, depending on where you are geographically, and what your demographic is that you're serving.

Everybody wants to be reflective of the communities they serve. It's easy to say, "Diversity is how many Black people, Hispanic people or women do you have in your company?" 

But it's much deeper than that. It goes beyond that. I had a utility company come to me recently and ask how to grow its diversity? "We only have X amount of people of color in our workforce and we're struggling to get them."

I replied, "What's the demographic makeup of the community you're in? If it isn't heavily populated by African Americans, where are you going to get these Black people from?"

Diversity doesn't just mean go hire all the Black people. It's relative to your organization and the communities that you're in.

If your community is made up of eighty percent White people, then your workforce is going to look like that. Then look at diversity and how many women are present in leadership. Are you inclusive of the LGBTQ-plus community? What's your age diversity? What's your veteran status diversity?

There are other ways to measure diversity, so don't think you're failing at your DEI platforms because you don't have a lot of people of color.

PUF: Does it help that there's been an increasing number of top leaders who are diverse?

Cornell Johnson: Number one, it absolutely helps because we're increasing the diversity of thought leadership. Your experiences shape your thoughts and people from different backgrounds have different lived experiences, which are going to give different outputs of contributions.

You and I are going to have different experiences. We're different ages with different ethnicities. We might hail from different parts of the world.

Putting us at the table together, we'll probably come up with better solutions than if it was just five of me. Having those leaders sitting at the helm of those organizations, it's not just the impact they're having on their organization, it's the impact they're having on the industry, and communities across their service territory.

Representation is key and seeing yourself in these leadership roles lets the workforce of tomorrow know that there is space for you in this industry, and the sky's the limit.

'Equity in Energy' articles at fortnightly.com:

• Tremese Davis, Nicor Gas VP of Operations and Taiwan Brown, Entergy VP of Diversity and Workforce Strategies
• Cornell Johnson, Center for Energy Workforce Development Director of DEI
• Keith Porta, APC Construction President
• Gayl Turk, Blaze Contracting Director of Business Development
• Stephanie Hickman, Trice Construction CEO
• Andy Kim, EVS Engineering President