Starshot Capital’s Post

Well done to our friends at Work on Climate for reaching an important milestone in helping build the workforce that will bring about the #greentransition. More below from green warrior Eugene Kirpichov. #climatejobs #climate #greenjobs

View profile for Eugene Kirpichov, graphic

Building the climate workforce | Systems change | ex-Google

“There’s such a big value in gathering a community together around solving a specific problem. Much more impact oriented than gathering for the sake of gathering.” Our initiative to fix the climate STEM talent pipeline just hit a huge milestone that I'm really proud of 💚 It proves that Work on Climate approach to workforce systems change is viable, and it gives me goosebumps that it actually worked. So, what did we do and how'd it go? A big bottleneck to climate tech innovation is shortage and lack of diversity in STEM talent - but the STEM talent pipeline is highly complex, no organization can fix it single-handedly. Last year we gathered a large group of powerful organizations all across the STEM talent pipeline in NY/NJ: educators at all levels, government agencies, professional associations, funders, and so on. We've been leading this group over the past 12+ months to conduct necessary research and identify specific bottlenecks in the pipeline, to prepare for building solutions to the bottlenecks. And... 🥁🥁🥁 at Climate Week NYC we got 9 of the organizations to commit to prototyping specific solutions to these talent bottlenecks!! (triple over the goal we set) What does this mean? - For the participating organizations: They are now drastically more ready for what the green economy will need from them. They are at the forefront of the change that all of their peers will need to embrace. - For us and for our funders: Our approach (assembling and leading a group of organizations across the "supply chain" of a specific climate workforce issue) is likely to work, and in the coming months we'll get even more signal. We should be doing more of this. - For climate action in the US: The first systemic effort to fix the climate STEM talent pipeline in the US is, so far, on track to succeed and be replicable. This gives hope, but also means it's time that others start replicating this work - it can't be just us. See blog link in comments!

Eugene Kirpichov

Building the climate workforce | Systems change | ex-Google

1mo

Thanks for highlighting our work Starshot Capital ! This initiative is especially important for climate hardtech startups to avoid becoming bottlenecked by availability of STEM talent down the line (which is already happening today for many), and for governments to ensure that innovations in energy storage come to their regions. Advanced-degree STEM jobs may be smaller in number than jobs like HVAC installers, but, just like founder roles, they are super catalytic - they enable innovation on technologies that then become ready for commercial scaling and building factories which create a lot more jobs for a wider range of workers. It's a fascinating topic. I was struck by a report by the Volta Foundation on the energy storage workforce, and a similar report by Pamela Tomski on the CCUS workforce.

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