EP24: Stories From the Field: Building Clean Energy Pathways from the Ground Up

00:00:05 Intro 

What could happen if we take our workforce to new heights? Workforce on the Mic presented by NAWDP brings you inspirational stories, innovative solutions, and expert insights that are shaping the future of the workforce. Tune in for dynamic conversations that motivate and transform the workforce development community. And now on to the episode. 

00:00:29 Alexis Franks 

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening all you workforce warriors across the country. My name is Alexis Franks and I am your Director of Membership with the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals. 

And today’s episode takes us into the heart of workforce development, entrepreneurship, and clean energy innovation, and how all these pieces come together at the local level to drive real economic impact. 

Our guests today are Dr. Kelvin Molina Brantley and Ron Brantley with Entrepreneurial and Business Collaborative, an organization doing some powerful work to support entrepreneurs, small businesses, and workforce pathways. 

And their approach blends community-based solutions with industry-aligned training, and we are excited to learn how it all comes together. So get ready to unpack the mission behind E&B Collaborative and how their workforce programming begin and explore the partnerships that make this type of work possible. So let’s dig in. 

What we do here, Kelvin and Ron, is pass the mic. So I’m going to pass the mic to you, Kelvin, just to get us started. Can you tell us where you’re joining us from and how you became connected to workforce development? 

00:01:54 Kelvin Molina Brantley 

Great, thank you. And thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you and your audience about the amazing work we’re doing over at the Entrepreneur and Business Collaborative, and so we at the entrepreneur, we say ENBC, so we at ENBC really started off our journey, I would say five years ago in response to some of the ARPA and economic incentives that the state was issuing out. 

And so we first started off trying to get our communities ready to receive the capital that we were seeing our federal government infuse in our economies to make sure that our people weren’t being left behind. 

And what I mean by our people is we are based in Springfield, Massachusetts, Western Massachusetts, really an hour plus away from Boston. Really the folks from here in the city of Massachusetts always talk about Western Mass being somewhere completely different. 

We tend to sort of look at it as our center point and really as the basis about how we’re engaging with this work. So it started off with this simple idea that we were going to provide an opportunity for individuals to accomplish or succeed or achieve their self-identified transformational growth or their pathway, right? This idea that we’re going to become flexible really to the individual and not necessarily be guided by the intense frameworks that we sometimes find in individual sectors.  

But for me personally, I came to the world of workforce development not necessarily deliberately, but through my work of community engagement and building and sort of realizing that in order for our communities to move forward with the efforts that the initiative was trying to get to, we really need to focus on the individual and more importantly, on the power the individual is able to live with when it comes to gaining not only employment that helps them sort of sustain their lives, but also address the underemployment, that other piece that tends to sort of be 

So that in itself, alongside all of my own personal experiences, really sort of gravitated us to sort of look at this as an opportunity for Ron and I to use our skill sets and experiences to push forward our agenda.  

Luckily for us, the state of Massachusetts is aligned with that mindset. And as a result, we have been able to partner up with state, specifically state programming as their rolling out their incentives specifically around clean energy. 

And we now are essentially providing a pathway, a guide for any individual, depending on where you, regardless of where you are, to enter in a support system that accomplishes the goals that I often, we oftentimes see happen in silos across other agents. But yeah, big picture, that’s really how I love to present ENBC. 

It’s complicated, but at the same time, it’s all mission based on the individual. 

00:04:52 Alexis Franks 

I love that, Kelvin. And I think you really spoke to the story or the experience of a lot of our listeners. 

We don’t end up directly identifying with a career or goal in workforce development, but we end up in this space really just based on our community engagement, our mission and our drive to help individuals on a pathway. 

And I’m curious, Ron, if you’ve had a similar experience like that in your work with EMB? 

00:05:23 Ron Molina Brantley 

Overall, yeah, I will echo a lot of the sentiments that Dr. Kelvin Molina said really around the work and how we got engaged in it. How I like to see it and approach it is really about our community. 

You know, we’re both live and raised in Springfield and we always have our community at our center in our heart and working with them to get engaged in not just workforce development development, but also business development and leadership. 

Because what I believe is entrepreneurship is always really to help our community with their self-divined transformation growth as well as generational wealth. So if you can help our community get engaged in these new emerging sectors that are coming in, clean energy as well as quantum, so our community is not really left behind. So that’s another way to think about it and really engage with the work that we do. 

00:06:21 Alexis Franks 

Absolutely. And I think that’s so true of so many communities that we work and provide services to, that we don’t want them to be left behind, that they have the opportunity to experience and drive economic impact in the places where they come from and want to live and stay and build those communities. 

So that’s definitely heart-driven work that you all are doing, and we’re excited that we get to learn a little bit more about how you’re working in those programs. 

So my next question just kind of leads into this. With EMB Collaborative, I know it’s known for the work with entrepreneurs and small businesses, but can you tell us what that support looks like in practice for you all? 

00:07:05 Kelvin Molina Brantley 

Yeah, so right now, so we are very fortunate to have a strong partnership with the state of Massachusetts and their efforts on the green economy. 

And they have really ambitious goals that really they’re not only are advocating through words, but they’re also backing up by having financial incentives and investments, if you would say. 

So as a result, our work primarily has aligned with this idea of having an entry point that’s diverse for the individual. And so we have a tiered approach of business development that we are sort of supporting, right? 

So we realize that there is a difference between someone who is purpose driven. 

I have an amazing idea and we could help them align their business strategy with the local economy. But we also experience the working professional that has that ambition to try to do something different with their lives. 

And then we then try to see if there’s any existing need within the economy that allows that individual to really start embracing the idea of entrepreneurship specifically to a need within the ecosystem that we’re trying to further develop. So again, our engagement with business development is really taken on as a case-by-case basis alongside programming. That’s the other piece too. 

That level of flexibility is ingrained in the way that we work, but we also have standard programming that you’d find in other locations where we’re focusing on that business planning process, the business canvas model, all those different things on top of our deliberate approach of ensuring that we’re providing that individual coaching. 

And so the business development piece also requires us to have a more realistic approach on scope for us as an organization trying to have that impact. Understanding that individual approach really does slow down having that mass huge impact. 

But what we’re focusing on is having that more sustained long term impact that has that secondary and tertiary benefits for community. And so our work definitely sort of becomes much more meaningful and deeper when it comes to business engagement and development in that way. 

00:09:20 Alexis Franks 

I love the way that you put that, uh, Kelvin. I think it’s, um, important. Our, our, most of our listeners working in traditional workforce programs are very familiar with a case management, um, of an individual that’s going along a career pathway in an industry. 

But I love that perspective of having a, almost a case manager for someone that is seeking to develop their own business and to give back to those communities, that’s definitely maybe a new perspective for some of our listeners, maybe something that they can take away as a service that we can really be providing in our workforce programming. 

And I think as we continue to see this work grow and expand, If we want to transition a little bit into what that looks like for clean energy and the programs that you’re running there, how does all of this work combine? 

00:10:16 Ron Molina Brantley 

Like Kelvin mentioned, the state has been a number one supporter, not just the work that we do, but the work in clean energy overall with Mass Clean Energy Center. 

We’ve been fortunate enough to have a multi-year grant that they call the Hub and spoke model where we’re a hub where we connect, we’re a conductor, collaborative within the Pioneer Valley to help businesses who need extra support with financials, whether it’s marketing or assistance. 

And then from there, they work with us. And then we have spoke partners, which is business partners who do specialized programs or specialized training, and we’re the conveyor of that. 

So they come through us, they go through a case management process, we help them identify where there are, businesses are indeed interesting. 

Not every business is the same, whether it’s financial, some needs different levels of support. So we help them navigate that process and we connect them to providers within our community and resources that we have to make their self-defined transformational growth that much cleaner, that much smoother. So we don’t leave businesses around. 

And then what I think is unique really around us is we also have the whole pipeline ecosystem with our workforce development. Businesses need employees, workers want more opportunity. 

So we do a great job of collaborating between our business owners and our workforce development program to have a seamless transaction because we know sometimes community is really around relationship building. 

And if we can connect the entrepreneurs that we’re working with, the workforce development or the employees that we have within our programs, sometimes it’s a cleaner synergy. 

But with clean energy, it’s the same way. 

These are like, like I said, an emerging industry, there’s a lot of unknown and we’re trying to demystify that as best we can. 

And it could be with the trades, electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, those are all clean energy businesses, which you may not know that, which some people don’t. So we’re trying to demystify the whole thing and open up not just these industries, but overall for our community. 

00:12:24 Alexis Franks 

Wow, I love that. And it really does bring all of the key pieces of successful workforce and business programs together. 

You’re making those pieces work with businesses and industry and offering the support that you all offer and really how we’re supporting those individuals and supporting the community and truly driving that economic impact. So that sounds great. 

I know we didn’t really discuss this in preparing for the podcast, but do you have an example of how this has worked with a particular individual or business that you’d like to share. 

00:13:02 Ron Molina Brantley 

Yeah, we have a great example. It’s, and I’m sure Charlie wouldn’t mind us using him as an example. Charlie came through, we were introduced through our first clean energy program, which is our CAP program, a consolidated accelerated program, which is an eight week bookend program where we introduce the concept of clean energy and business and how they relate to one another. 

So he came to our program. Love the idea of he’s not. He’s a master electrician. Love the idea of teaching, love the idea of helping electricians get throughout the Argers process, becoming electrician, especially. We’ll leave it there. 

So he came through our program and fortunate enough, we decided to, you know what, you do is great, how about I help you write a grant to MassCEC to see if we can create an electrical training program for new individuals as well as journeymen, kind of like this mentor. 

And we were fortunate enough to get a planning grant. And then that planning grant recently got turned into an implementation grant. So right now, we’re recruiting for our first electrical training program with grounded services and Charlie Jackson. 

So it came through the whole pipeline from going through our program, reapplying, helped them with the planning grant, helped them with that process, and now he’s running his own training program. 

I want to add to the story because I think there’s something else that is happening here. One of the many reasons why this is so fruitful for all of us is because there’s a shared agreement that there are barriers that our communities are experiencing that prohibit our community folks to have access to apprenticeships and all the other pathways you’d think would be available for communities like ours. And Charlie understands that. 

00:14:53 Kelvin Molina Brantley 

He comes from the community himself. And so that ability to sort of see eye to eye on that allowed us all to enter into planning with having that understanding of what is needed for support, right? 

It isn’t necessarily what we naturally see because if it worked, what we have worked, we wouldn’t have these conversations. 

So it really allowed us really, and the state again promotes this process, to really think about how are we going to do things differently? 

What type of support have we experienced our participants suffer with, struggle with, that we could then integrate ahead of time? 

So that idea of data based decision making is really integral in our approach and someone like Charlie just lined perfectly and his flexibility and willingness. 

To be able to do go above and beyond to ensure that we have success in our program is exactly what’s needed, especially at this time is critical juncture as we think about what happens next to community. 

00:15:48 Alexis Franks 

Yes, and I love that perspective too, because we’re really tying or using our knowledge as a workforce professional of both business needs and maybe the challenges that a participant or a potential employee might face to bridge that gap. 

How can we help support on both ends of the spectrum to make sure that businesses really can be successful? 

And that’s such a unique perspective, I think that’s one that a lot of our listeners may just want to become more familiar with. Are we actually listening to and understanding the needs of both the business and our participant to bridge that gap? 

So that’s an excellent example. I’m so glad that you all were able to share with us. 

And we’ve had you for a while today, so I just have one more question for you before we wrap up. For any individual or workforce professional that wants to learn a little bit more about how to start offering services in a unique perspective with really bridging that gap between businesses and participants and or even understanding clean energy as an industry, where would you advise them to start? How could they get started in that work? 

00:17:04 Kelvin Molina Brantley 

I would say, I think we both might have some recommendations. I’ll jump in first. And I would say that it really, from my perspective, it’s mindset, right? 

So any individual who’s doing this work could easily replicate models and tools and approaches that you find across the sector as best practice. But I think the mindset is crucial because it requires us to be experimental and also decision making when data starts proving the truth. 

And so that mindset sometimes is difficult, especially when you have so much 

And so for us, really, we were challenged many times on our creativity and in a way of our approach, because we were sort of being challenged on traditional approaches to this type of work, but we stuck with it. 

And again, for us, we were lucky our partner with the state also encourages the idea of pausing, reflecting, planning, and then making decisions in that way. 

And so we just internalized that same model as far as how we ended up growing from where we started to the additional layers of support that have been added and we’ve expanded all because of what we’re hearing from communities. 

So it’s, again, it’s that idea of the mindset and the willingness to be uncomfortable, creative, bringing people in, collaborative, and really real as to what is needed in our community. 

00:18:28 Ron Molina Brantley 

Yeah, I think that’s well said. The only thing that I will add to that is find a community partner. For us, we are very fortunate with MassCEC to be willing, but I would recommend going to masscc.com, look at the information that they have. 

They have a slew of information resources as well as a curriculum that is online and free and it’s available to the public, but it’s also a great resource to have. 

And you could also reach out to us. You can go to our website. you know, e and be collaborative.com and just reach out and see how we can connect. 

00:19:04 Alexis Franks 

Well, that is awesome. That is amazing information and advice. 

And here on Workforce on the Mic presented by NAWDP, we do have mic drop moments. So you have given us a couple of mic drop moments for this episode. 

We definitely want to be experimental and be creative and find the right community partners to get started in this work and really bridging that gap between employers and potential job employees. 

So thank you both so much for joining us today on Workforce on the Mic. 

We appreciate having you and we look forward to continuing to connect with you all and learning a little bit more about the work you’re doing. 

00:19:49 Kelvin Molina Brantley 

Great, thanks so much for having us. This was a great experience and fun. 

So thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity to speak on the amazing work that we have going on here in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts. Thanks so much. 

00:20:03 Alexis Franks 

Before we wrap up, make sure to register for the upcoming NAWDP Business Services Academy. 

This event is specifically designed to equip workforce professionals with the advanced tools, business engagement strategies, and pipeline development skills needed to better serve local employers. 

Spaces fill up fast, so head over to www.nautup.org today to secure your spot. 

00:20:38 Conclusion 

Thank you for listening to Workforce on the Mic, presented by NAWDP. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

To learn more about NAWDP and to become a member, visit www.nawdp.org. That’s www.nawdp.org.