So a word of congratulations to Rahsaan Whitney. Rahsaan is a GETS graduate (Cohort 5) and now a FORMER member of the GETS Energy Services crew. I say “former” because, as of yesterday, Rahsaan is now a full-time employee of Advanced Home Energy (insert shameless plug for employer who hires GETS grads here: http://www.advancedhomeenergy.com/ ).
There’s a lot of things that went into making this moment, but first, a little about Rahsaan:
See, Rahsaan is a great guy. I mean, you can’t hardly be around this guy for more than about 2 minutes and not like him. And Rahsaan is a very responsible dude. He’s a guy struggling just like the rest of us trying to find a career he can “sink his teeth into” and, yeah, he’s got some barriers (show me someone who doesn’t have barriers, though, right?). Well, he graduates from GETS last July, gets hired by the GETS Energy Services program and proceeds to work hard. Real hard. In the process, he get tons of real-world, in-the-field experience with everything residential energy efficiency. I mean everything: from working with clients to finding and fixing problems, Rahsaan’s done it all. Along comes this opportunity, and BOOM! Rahsaan’s on it. He’s ready, he’s trained, he’s inspired, he floors the interviewers and lands the job.
So what about all of those things that went into making this moment a reality? Here’s a partial list:
1. Rising Sun partners with RichmondBUILD (insert shameless plug for awesome partner here: http://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/index.aspx?nid=1243) and creates a world-class training, the “Green Energy Training Services” (GETS).
2. Rising Sun works closely with energy efficiency employers to find out what they need in new employees and works to make GETS the best training possible to meet those demands.
3. Rising Sun partners with the cities of Richmond and Berkeley to create the GETS Energy Services, giving GETS graduates the opportunity to learn more and get more experience – just what the employers are looking for.
4. PG&E works closely with the CPUC, CEC, the CBPCA and Build It Green to create the Energy Upgrade California program, giving thousands of dollars in incentives to home owners to hire companies like Advanced Home Energy to make their homes more efficient and comfortable. Advanced Home Energy’s work load increases, requiring more trained staff.
5. Rahsaan works his butt off in the GETS training and on the GETS Energy Services crew. When the opportunity presents itself, Rahsaan is the best applicant for Advanced Energy’s job opening.
It’s almost kinda inspirational how, when we start partnering and working together, good people get to do good work. Now here’s my question to you:
What are you doing today to help make our sustainable future a reality?
I know what Rahsaan’s doing. Get inspired and get in there. We have a lot of work to do. Speaking of which, I gotta go. G
