Connecting Veterans to Clean Energy Careers with Jana Toner, ACP | EP184

What makes ACP unique is because we do intersect with so many different divisions of what a company is trying to accomplish. And we are a nonprofit that this is falam Anthropy. This is volunteer time from someone schedule. So it really does support those volunteerism efforts within an organization. And it we work with the DEI divisions, you know, because we are so focused on veterans and spouses,

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Each year, there are 200,000 servicemen and women returning from the military in the United States. And guess what, folks, your organization can benefit from this massive workforce. And it's a two way street. They need your assistance, and we need their hearts and minds. Welcome to the Clean Power Hour. I'm Tim Montague, your host today. My guest is Jana Toner. She is the Senior Vice President for American Corporate Partners, an organization based in New York, with offices in DC that is dedicated to helping our servicemen and women find a toehold in the in the economy in the civilian economy. And full in full disclosure, I've been a mentor to two of these folks. Shout out to Mike and Kyle. It's been a tremendous honor and pleasure working with them, and helping them find their way into the clean economy. Welcome to the show, Jana.

Thank you so much, Tim, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be able to share more with your audience all about veterans and how the public can help and how they can help them find great jobs.

Yeah, I have to say it's been really eye opening for me to, you know, to get to know these people. And they're highly qualified individuals, many of them, that's certainly the case with Mike and Carl, the guys that I'm working with, and but it's kind of like, it's a bit of a puzzle for them. The roles that they play in the military are very different than the role that they will end up playing probably in the clean economy or in the economy at large. But tell us a little bit about yourself, Jana, how did you come to ACP as it's known, and not to be confused with American clean power? American corporate partners? It took me a long time to make that connection. But anyway, how did you come to ACP? And tell us a little bit about the history of the organization? Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah. How often does that happen? Although I'm based in Washington, DC, and so we only speak in acronyms here in DC. So they so having those the two ACPs is pretty, pretty funny. But a little bit about about me and my background. I my career has been mostly in public service. I've served in two presidential administrations so really learned about how government works and how to create good policy that outlasts you and ways to really make an impact. And my previous job before joining ACP, I was in the White House, I was the chief of staff to Second Lady Karen pence. And I launched her initiatives around Military Spouse Employment, veterans suicide prevention and mental health. So really got to know this space, worked closely with DOD, with the hill with non other nonprofit partners with corporations who cared about military families and wanting to make an impact and, and helping our nation's veterans and ACP was, was one of those partners so joined ACP over two years ago, to help them again, just have a bigger presence and increase their impact and bring more veterans and partners and mentors into the organization. So ACP has been around since 2008. So a long time. We have over 15 years in this space, and it's highly successful. We've served over 30,000 Veterans and spouses through the program and the model of ACP is is pretty unique and specific. We partner transitioning Servicemembers, Veterans, post 911 veterans and active duty military spouses, with mentors such as yourself, or a one year period to achieve the career goals. So we have a method to about how to pair people how to track that relationship, how to provide resources. And again, our goal at ACP is really to help these veterans and spouse is buying that career that meaningful and sustaining career that they deserve after serving in our nation's military?

Well said, Well said 30,000. That's, that's an impressive number. And that statistic still is, you know, the statistic of how many servicemen and women are returning from service each year is still mind boggling. You know, here in the United States in the in q4 of 2023. Unemployment is very low, we have less than 4% unemployment, which for all intents and purposes is zero. There's always going to be a small percentage of people that are just not going to find a toehold in the economy for various and sundry reasons. But at the same time, our clean economy, okay, my show is all about the clean economy, solar wind, battery storage, the energy transition writ large, and is growing like gangbusters. We're going to double the industry between now and 2030. So we're going to grow from 250,000 people to 500,000 people. So there is a tremendous opportunity for any, anybody out there, including our returning servicemen and women to learn about the clean economy and find a toehold in that. And thanks to you know, things like the IRA, the inflation Reduction Act, the United States is now building a lot of factories, these are battery factories, solar panel, factories, Evie factories, wind turbine, factories, etc. And, but across the board, we need more installers, we need more electricians, we need more engineers, we need more people in finance, and marketing and sales, etc, etc. It's entirely across the board. So there's a huge opportunity. But it is a challenge, right? Fine. Helping the servicemen and women translate their skills into ways that yeah, just helping them translate their skills, it's it, I've learned that just the resume alone, right, and you look at a service person's resume. And there are all these all this language and acronyms, and just vocabulary that I don't know what it is. And so I think it is there is a challenge to help them find a path and and my approach, you know, and I really hope that you my listeners will will take this to heart is that each of us are nodes in a network. And this is the best thing that we can do to help each other and help grow the economy is to see ourselves as nodes and building more nodes in our network every day, I see you know, you Jen are now part of my network. And I look forward to connecting the dots to other people in your network and vice versa. And I say this to my mentees, Mike and Kyle, think of yourselves as nodes and think of every contact that you make as nodes don't look for a job, look to build your, your knowledge base and your network. And good things will come from that. And then the other. The other metaphor that I use a lot is planting seeds every day. I'm planting seeds, I'm building relationships, I'm growing knowledge, and I'm putting myself out there in ways that are meaningful, I'm helping the world. You know, I am a catalyst for the clean energy transition. I help the world in so many different ways in subtle ways. But if I'm not if I'm not ambitious about that, if I sit on the couch, it's not gonna happen. Right. I have to I have to put energy and and passion into that process. So tell us a little bit more though, Jana, about ACP. If you're a returning serviceman, or woman, and you're not involved with ACP, what should you know, about ACP? And then what should your corporate partners know about working with ACP? Yes,

well, there's so much I want to add, I first too want to go back to your point about the transition, right and unemployment rates. And I think that's what people get wrong about that trends. Because they think well, their unemployment rate is practically zero. Veterans are fine. Everybody who says they want to hire a veteran, what's the problem? But as you know, because you've worked with with two veterans, it is not an easy process to make that transition out of the military. So that's why what we see is 61% 61% of veterans three years post transition, feel that they are underemployed. underemployed, is the key. And obviously it takes some time when you come out to kind of learn a new endeavor. st and build your career. But we want to help through ACP, this veterans find that right fit, so at least they they're starting in the right place and know what their skill sets are and how they translate into the corporate world. And what we see at ACP during the transition is that it's really difficult. For service members, they've never looked for a job before the military, it's pretty standard. And now they're entering the private sector, they, their network is all mostly military, you apply for a job online, and anyone who knows that you're just applying for jobs online, you're probably not going to get hired that way. That's not how most people are hired. That's a very frustrating process. And again, it's translating that skill sets. And veterans just aren't great about creating that story about their experience, and why what they did. And speaking in terms of AI, which is really important, during the interview process, you have to talk about your personal experience and what you can bring to an organization. And again, that's where our mentors can help kind of guide our veterans and say, this isn't quite making sense. And let's work on that a little bit more. Let's translate what all that means into, into the private sector. Language. So, and I love what you brought up about the network. And you know, again, you're coming out of the military, most of your network is in the military. And you have to grow that network, in that field of where you're looking to go. And so the mentor is like one step. And you're able to introduce your protege to so many different types of positions and industries, through your network. And this is just one step for our veterans and spouses in that job search process. I also, and you brought this up too, is that being a mentor really is adds huge value to your own career, because you're able to kind of take a step back and say, you know, what are the challenges in my industry? What do I need? And how do I? How is this coming across, while also, you know, building your own network. So I'm glad you've made that connection, because it's something I really do talk about a lot with our mentors about how much they gain and satisfied with the program and would mentor again, so they really find that experience wanting to wanting to repeat it. So I think your final part of that question was kind of why, why ACP? And how can you get involved with ACP. So we partner with many different corporations and companies to be able to provide these free mentorships to our service members and spouses. So we have, we have representatives across probably every industry, including including energy, we have next era as one of our art partners, we have many companies in the defense contracting sector as well. And manufacturing it too, and technology across across the board. So always looking to expand that network, and always looking to add in more mentors. So after this conversation, you're wanting to be a mentor, visit our website, ACP dash usa.org. To sign up, you can also reach out to me directly and I think we can put that in my email in the in the chat notes if during broadcasts, if that if needed, but I'm dying answer the questions. I felt like I might have missed a few there. Sure,

no worries. I would love to hear what you have to say to returning servicemen and women because you probably have many fingers in that pie so to speak. But there are probably many men and women who don't know about ACP. So or maybe even a step back, like what is the what is the basic process that the military has for preparing their servicemen and women to return to civilian society? And then how does ACP engage in that process? And yeah, what at what point do you engage with the veterans? Yeah,

so we typically and we typically at tell people who are looking to leave and it's a long process building up to your retirement or the end of your, your tournament in in service, we typically say no more than a year, year and a half before your retirement date, your exit date to join ACP because you really need to be in that place of deciding where You want to go and where to start looking. But not everyone in our program is still serving, there are many people who have already exited the military or in the private sector and realizing I don't think I nailed my transition, I don't think I'm I picked the right career and how do I, how do I make changes? And how do I change change industries, and that's where the mentor can help. So ACP is kind of one piece of this transition, because there's a lot of different resources out there and programs that are very successful, but they don't last a year. And ACPs mentoring program is designed to kind of see somebody through that whole process. So you may have a one week intensive about how to look for a job, your mentor kind of helps you along the way to say, Okay, what did you learn from there, let's put it into practice. And we suggest that our mentors, and protegees meet once a month, for up to 12 months, for about an hour. So it's designed to be able to be that sounding board and support network as you are going through this entire process. And then if you find a job early in the process, that's great. But we really suggest that you should continue working with your mentor, because it's a it's a transition to go from A to learning any new company's culture, the way they do things, the way they speak, the way the performance plans are, are used, and how to how to navigate to the promotion process, like it's a lot to kind of, whether you're coming from the military, or just from a different organization into a new one to learn and your mentor can help help with that. As far as kind of the process itself, I do want to make sure, you know, you went through this, Tim, you know, we go through a process of trying to match the expertise of the mentor with the goals of the veteran or spouse so that there is automatically this kind of a similar interest. And you can you can request that you want to work with somebody have a certain level of experience, or education or region where they're based in a country, you know, we do our best to accommodate those requests. But we really do, again, try to find find that fit of what you're trying to accomplish and what your mentor can offer you go. And everyone has a choice to say, you know, I don't think this is the right fit. Before we get started. Let's let's maybe try sure, again, happen often. But, you know, but that's the way the way I can work.

Makes sense. I had another question. The Oh, you mentioned that NextEra is one of the corporate partners of ACP. They're, you know, the largest wind and solar developer in the United States. big company. If, and, you know, I'm on the opposite end of that spectrum. I'm a solo entrepreneur. So there's, there's, you know, if you're listening to this, and going well, you know, I'm not I'm not a big company, what, what can I do? Well, if you're an individual, and you have skills, and you know, background in business, you can you can engage with ACP and help these people. But if you're a if you're a corporation, with, you know, layers of administration, and there is a certain bureaucracy in these in these companies, how does, how does ACP engage with a bigger company? And then, you know, how does the company spread the word so to speak inside their own ranks? That this is an opportunity for their for their, for their staff, and professionals?

Yeah, yeah, you've brought up a good point. We do have many different types of partners. So we have individuals such as yourself, and who are privately funded, and we have corporations. We have smaller companies who may recruit three or four mentors and do a smaller program, which is fantastic, up to large corporations who will provide upwards of 200 volunteer mentors and kind of everything in between. But what makes ACP unique is because we do intersect with so many different divisions of what a company is trying to accomplish. We are a nonprofit. This is falam. Philanthropy, this is volunteer time, from someone's schedule. So it really does support those volunteerism efforts within an organization. And it we work with the DEI divisions, you know, because we are folks that focused on veterans and spouses. So I'll spend a lot of time with the CO leads of the VR G's and speaking with those organizations and recruiting mentors from the From those business groups, as well, and then also work closely with the talent acquisition team, because in our program at any given point, there's around 40 905,000 active pairs and process, not everyone is looking to find a job sometimes, or people join the program, they already have a job and trying to make other needed mentor with other decisions and, and that, but be like to be able to help those companies hiring in our network, be connected with veterans who are looking for our work, they know these companies who support ACP, they care about the military, they are providing, you know, volunteers and financial support, to help veterans find that right fit this is something that's important to them, in their culture, and that that and that makes a big difference to to veterans, as well. And, and so really, I It's great to be able to work with so many different divisions and help accompany, you know, support support veterans and military families. You know, something else that you said earlier that I want to circle back to is, is the idea that of clean energy and the energy sector, because so many of those in our program are looking for careers in the technical, technological space, manufacturing logistics, I mean, really, we asked what you're interested in, they vary, I think, we have up to like 30, to 40 different categories and everything in between. But really, what the veteran is kind of looking for is that meaningful, place something to you to give back to kind of replicate what they had the military of being part of something bigger. And so I see a really strong connection with the clean energy sector, and those in our program. And I think there's a lot of opportunities for those in our program, looking for jobs to be connected with the sector.

That's a great point, you know, being part of something bigger than yourself. And, you know, we're all on this spaceship Earth. You know, we all have so much more in common than we have differences. It makes me very sad sometimes that we're in the state of affairs that we're in, in the United States, being so divided, sometimes culturally and socially. But we have so much more in common really, as Americans, but as humans, and, you know, being part of the future of energy is super meaningful, because, you know, let's face it without electricity, life is just not that much fun. Now, there are a billion people around the world who are living without electricity. And that's also something that you as an energy professional, or aspiring energy professional can make an impact on of course, and, but right here at home, right, we have a big job to do. The energy transition is going to happen one way or the other. Okay, the writing is on the wall, we have the technology, solar, wind and batteries are the most affordable technologies. Now, it's not a question of if it's a question of how fast and and can we do this in a way that is good for the economy and good for the future of humanity. And, you know, so just this this theme, though, of being part of something bigger, clearly, our servicemen and women have participated in that being part of the military, and, and kind of being mission driven. And I myself am a completely mission driven entrepreneur. So I just will say to you, men and women out there, thank you for your service. And please do not be shy about reaching out to clean economy companies, because you will find that many of us are mission driven. We want a safer, healthier future for humanity. And, and solar wind batteries are just clearly so much part of that solution by 2050. Okay, the grid is going to be 90%, wind and solar. So we have a 30 year run now. And many of these servicemen and women are coming out of the military, in their 30s and 40s. They've got long careers ahead of them. And so the sooner we help them find a meaningful mission in civilian life, the better for everyone involved. So what else should we should we shine a light on about the ACP? There are there are challenges, of course, but there are many, many opportunities and I would love to hear what is top of mind for you, Jana, when you think about your mission in helping men and women find a faster better life here in the civilian economy.

I think something that I really spent a lot of time thinking about is, you know, the importance of veterans. And I think we are there many challenges and abroad right now and as far as security goes and country's at war, and but here in the United States, we are fairly safe. And I don't know that people spend as much time thinking and caring about veterans as they used to were 20 plus years past 911. And so what I spend a lot of time on is thinking about ways to to remind people how important veterans are why we need, you know, we have this all volunteer force. And in order for that to work, is for those who who decide to serve, if there is a meaningful career or a well paying job waiting for them. At the end, that's the only way this system works. And to being able to be in this space of helping veterans and spouses find that employment opportunity, you rewards them for their military career, I don't want someone to serve and feel like they lost five or 10 years of their career and have take a huge step back and then make up that time. And that that serve you may have been a good experience, and you mature them in many different ways, but didn't help them career wise. So how do we as a country do better to make sure that that that military service is recognized and and accounted for when making that transition into into corporate America. So I'm always open to ideas around that. I also, on the flip side, make sure to tell our veterans and spouses as well is that you have to make the case for people and that's where the storytelling comes in. Right. And that's where your mentor comes in and helping to share all your many different ways you are a leader and project management and many different skills you developed in the military and how that can benefit a company in the job. And and there's not much time when you're talking to it, talent acquisition, or hiring manager, they don't have a lot of time to vote each person. So you have to make that case for them. And, and your mentor can help with that.

Yeah, it's a two way street. You know, like I I try to get to a place very quickly with my, my protege is that look, I am a human being. I have been on my own journey. And I'm happy to share any aspect of that journey with you. And in return, I invite you to share any aspect of your journey. This is largely about your career. But we're human beings and we have a life. We have siblings, we have parents, we have health and wellness, or ill health and, and it's it's the whole enchilada. So if you're listening to this, and you're at all interested in learning more about ACP, please reach out to me I have been serving as a mentor for the last six months. I know a little bit about it, I can share my experience, I can connect you to ACP. But also please reach out to Jana, her contact info will be in the show notes. How can our listeners engage with ACP? In other ways, Jana, how should they connect with ACP.

So I think I'm first connect with me on LinkedIn, Jama toner, also follow American corporate partners LinkedIn, that's our kind of our primary delivery of messages. We also have an ACP connects, which is a LinkedIn group that's designed to be able to post jobs and connect with our community to make some of those career and Career Connections. Also, you can sign up to be a mentor, you don't have to be a veteran, to be a mentor, only a third of our mentors have served before, this is really a chance to again, to give back and to learn about what it means to to serve in the military and to have a real impact in a service member or military spouses life and career. And you can also you can volunteer fellas on social media, you can get more involved in in veteran causes. And I hope that ACP is is the one that when that each is wonderful.

Well, I want to thank Jana Toner, Senior Vice President with ACP, American corporate partners for being with us this morning. Please check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. That's the best thing you can do to help others find the show but tell a friend about the Clean Power Hour. All of our content is at cleanpowerhour.com We have a very robust YouTube channel which is linked at cleanpowerhour.com as well and connect with me on LinkedIn. I love connecting with my listeners. And again, like I said, if you're at all intrigued by ACP, please reach out to me, I would love to talk with you about my experience. Being a mentor without I will say, let's grow solar and storage. I'm Tim Montague. Thank you so much, Jana.

Thank you have a great day.

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