DOE's Betony Jones on Building a Sustainable Energy Workforce
*This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu. This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure.
Today we're talking about the US Department of Energy’s strategy on what it takes to create a successful and sustaining energy workforce. Our guest is Betony Jones, who was appointed by President Biden as the DOE'S Director of the Office of Energy Jobs. This means she oversees jobs and workforce development strategies across the DOE as well as engagement with organized labor to ensure that the department's policies and programs implementation result in high-quality jobs.
We hear about Betony's career through the Clinton administration, working at the University of California Labor Center, and founding a research group called Inclusive Economics and her decision to join the current administration to build an equitable energy workforce for the next decade.
We break down what energy jobs mean, why there's a focus specifically on manufacturing and construction jobs within that definition, and we talk about the key elements needed for high-quality jobs, above average wages, predictable hours, short and long-term benefits like retirement and healthcare, jobs that give workers a voice, plus the importance of unions in enabling all of the above and how unions form.
*If you enjoyed this episode, consider leaving a review! You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded on Oct 11, 2023 (Published on Dec 13, 2023)
In this episode, we cover:
Betony's background and career path
How she leveraged policy research to demonstrate employment and economic impacts
Betony's work in inclusive economics
Denver's sales tax case study success
The need for energy jobs in construction, manufacturing, engineering science. and R&D
Betony's focus on the deployment workforce
The DOE's approach to quality jobs with good pay and benefits
The importance of workers having a voice and the role of unions
How a union is formed, how they gain power, and the impact on the clean energy transition
The role of the private sector in building the energy workforce
How Betony measures success over the next 5 years
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Yin Lu:
Today we're talking about the US Department of Energy Strategy on what it takes to create a successful and sustaining energy workforce. Joining me is Betony Jones, who was appointed by President Biden as the DOE'S Director of the Office of Energy Jobs. This means she oversees jobs and workforce development strategies across the DOE as well as engagement with organized labor to ensure that the department's policies and programs implementation result in high quality jobs. We hear about Betony's career through the Clinton administration, working at the University of California Labor Center, founding a research group called Inclusive Economics and her decision to join the current administration to take on the challenge of building an equitable energy workforce for the next decade.
We break down what energy jobs means, why there's a focus specifically on manufacturing and construction jobs within that definition, and we talk about the key elements needed for high quality jobs, above average wages, predictable hours, short and long-term benefits like retirement and healthcare, jobs that give workers a voice, plus the importance of unions in enabling all of the above and how unions form. But before we get started-
Cody Simms:
I'm Cody Sims.
Yin Lu:
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs:
And I'm Jason Jacobs. And welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu:
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms:
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.
Yin Lu:
And with that, Betony, welcome to the show.
Betony Jones:
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Yin Lu:
Some of the prevalent themes that we've heard on the show in voices in the past are three buckets. One is the headline and the problem. There's a shortage on talent transitioning into the skilled labor workforce needed to fill all of the things that we need to do around rewiring our infrastructure for the next hundred years. And then we've also been hearing on the ground perspectives, small medium business owners feeling frustration. They can't keep folks in their workforce long enough because someone else will pay higher, and what are they doing paying for training when people will go through the training and go somewhere else?
And then we've been hearing around the solution space and a lot of it driven on the heels of the IRA and infrastructure bill, the White House, I think it was July of 2022, had started the Talent Pipeline challenge. The DOE recently announced a big bundle of money to be directed towards states for training and residential efficiency contractor programs. So we've been hearing the headline and then people's frustrations. And then on the ground, what are the policy tactical steps that are being taken. And Betony, you are the perfect person to weave a lot of these narratives and perspectives together, and you're so well positioned to do that just given decades of experience across multiple administrations and in the private sector. Let's start off with your background. Would love to learn a bit more about how you've navigated your incredibly amazing career path to date.
Betony Jones:
Sure. Well, like a lot of young people, I think in high school and even college, I wasn't aware of the range of job opportunities out there, so I wanted to do something that related to science and people. So I was studying, I was pre-med in college, but I was really interested in the environmental science to fulfill my science requirements. And so as part of pursuing science in college, I started learning about climate change. And specifically I was at the University of Michigan Biological Station up in northern Michigan. And they were conducting experiments, growing plants under elevated carbon dioxide conditions and feeding those plants to animals and looking at the effects of plants grown under elevated greenhouse gases. And it was really visibly shocking actually to see the difference in these ripple effects in the ecosystem from plants grown under the kind of carbon dioxide emissions that we were looking at in the future.
So looking at the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and what they were projected to do if we didn't curb emissions, it was rather shocking. Visibly trees grew twice as big. And so I started learning more about climate change and climate science in particular, and realized that we knew a lot and that the policy that the United States federal government was pushing wasn't really reflective of the risks and the dangers associated with climate change and wasn't really reflective of the best science. And so when I graduated from University of Michigan, I was looking for a position in the federal government dealing with climate science, and I had to find a position that also had to do with national security. This was a requirement from a study abroad that I had done in India. So I said, "Well, how do I connect climate change and national security?"
And I ended up in the Clinton administration in the Office of Science and Technology policy thinking with my new bachelor's of science degree from University of Michigan that if I could just spend a few months translating the science for policymakers, then we could solve the problem and I could be on my way to medical school. Spending time in DC and particularly in the White House opened my eyes to the complexity of policymaking. And I realized that the science was actually pretty marginalized in the policymaking discussion. We knew a lot, there were a few unanswered questions, but they weren't significant questions. But the science wasn't really moving people to act. And what I saw was moving people was questions about the economy, about jobs. I was hooked by that point on trying to address this issue of climate change, and so I decided to pivot and approach the challenge from a more social perspective and look at climate change solutions as not science or moral imperatives, but as economic opportunities, opportunities to reinvest in our infrastructure and to create good quality jobs.
And I thought I developed this theory of change that if we could find and implement solutions to reduce greenhouse gases that work for people that create investment opportunities and business opportunities and opportunities for workers to see themselves in a low carbon future, that that's the way we would build the political will to get the climate policies over the finish line. And so I left DC and I went back to graduate school to learn the social implications of climate change. And then I went into the field and I really wanted to demonstrate this idea that we could solve climate change, we could implement projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and we could do that in places where people didn't even necessarily have to believe that climate change was a problem. So I worked on developing and executing energy efficiency programs across rural California where we could reduce emissions, save businesses money, and create good quality jobs in the local community.
And I looked at carbon sequestration in the forestry sector and just basically running through all the different kinds of programs that could link economic development, quality job creation, and greenhouse gas emission reductions. And I did that, and then I pivoted to research and policy research to take some of what I'd learned from the implementation arena to the policy arena at the state level. And I worked with state agencies in a lot of cities and local governments to connect economic and workforce issues with their climate ambitions and to try to really drive solutions that did that.
So then you fast forward and President Biden was elected, and President Biden decided that two of his big marquee priorities were going to be address climate change and be the most pro-union president in the history of the country and really link those two things, invest in clean energy deployment and climate solutions in a way that creates good quality jobs and rebuilds our domestic economy and rebuilds resources, domestic manufacturing. And so the job that I have now is a culmination of everything that I did from this initial insight in the Clinton administration that this was going to be the way that we were going to solve this problem. And now I have the job of getting to do that.
Yin Lu:
It's amazing to hear you speak your story and have the dominoes fall in such an obvious way. Do you feel like it was linear from your perspective or did it feel non-linear and trying things here and there?
Betony Jones:
Yeah, it was fairly intentional. I had a roadmap in mind, and part of it had to do with real world experience, really trying hard things in hard places, and then learning from that and applying that through a rigorous research lens to inform policymaking. A lot of my friends remark that this job that I have now just seemed to come out of nowhere. And for me, it was part of the plan. I wanted to go implement to try some things to prove that this model could work, but I always hoped to take that knowledge back to DC and inform policy at the highest level. It happened faster than I thought for sure. I did not realize that President Biden was going to be so strong on these particular issues that I cared about or that I would have an opportunity to work in the Biden administration.
I would say that my career path was fairly well mapped out, and it was actually really hard and sort of lonely at times to try to figure out how I could advance in this goal that I had when that's not necessarily the jobs that were available to me or people weren't really hiring someone with this intersectional approach. And so it wasn't really easy, but I had this really clear vision of what I thought would work and how I wanted to engage in the industry.
Yin Lu:
It must feel surreal/incredible that 20 years you being the fresh-eyed person on the hill and working at the tail end of the Clinton administration and thinking, "Well, if I just translated what needed to be done, it'll turn into policy and it'll work." And finally 20 years later, there's a president that comes out and says, "Hey, I care about climate change and I care about union jobs, and I care about just workforce development." That is a non-trivial amount of work that you and so many of your colleagues have done for the past decades to come up with the research to validate the fact that if we focus on the right things for the environment, the economy will grow and jobs will be created. A lot of the work that you've done in that leveraging policy research to demonstrate the employment economic impacts to create opportunity came from your time at inclusive economics and working for the UC system. I'm wondering if you can talk more about what those jobs were like and what were your proudest moments from those chapters.
Betony Jones:
I got connected with UC Berkeley serendipitously. I had been implementing this 14 county energy efficiency program that was really premised on the idea, and this was during the recession in the mid 2000s. It was really premised on the idea that if we created good paying jobs and invested in the skill development of the local workforce, that we would actually be able to get deeper and longer lasting energy savings, that a lot of energy efficiency depends on the skill of the people doing the energy audits and the installers and what they're looking for and what potential and opportunity they're able to pitch and sell to local businesses. And so that program was wildly successful. It was a very remote and hard to region, and the way that we designed that program actually led to deeper, longer lasting savings in a very measurable way. And it was cost effective, which blew everybody away.
And so I had done it. I demonstrated that it was possible, and then I really wanted to use that knowledge and experience to shift how at the state level we thought about energy efficiency implementation. I connected with the UC Berkeley Labor Center who was embarking on a study for California's investor owned utilities to figure out workforce solutions and alignment between workforce education and training and energy savings. And so it was very serendipitous. And that led to then working as the associate director for the Green Economy Center at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, which was really looking at how do we help workers and in particular organized labor see a future for themselves in a low carbon economy? How do we tie these climate solutions to good quality jobs, and how can we ensure that this is done in a synergistic way that can improve job quality and improve energy and climate outcomes?
It was like a five-year apprenticeship really that I did at the Berkeley Labor Center, learning how to do economic and employment research and analysis in a really quantitative way, how to model that and how to look at how to make job quality metrics measurable and really communicate to policy makers to try to move the needle on how we're designing climate policy in a way to lead to those outcomes. And so inclusive economics was really an extension of that. There was some research and particular technical assistance in advising that I could do independently more easily than I could do as part of the UC system.
So that was the genesis of inclusive economics where it was more hands-on, using the research in a very applied way to drive policy decisions at the state and local level, working with cities really all across the country, some real standouts; Denver, Boston, San Diego, San Francisco, LA, St. Paul, Minnesota. Really, a lot of mayors have been really visionary, and they have to be like, "How do we kill a few birds with one stone? We have to create local jobs, we have to address equity, we need to address climate change. How can we do that in one fell swoop?" And so that's where inclusive economics really stepped in to support.
So it's fresh in my mind, I think I'll talk about Denver. It was so exciting to see the work that we started a few years ago take off in a big way. But the City of Denver wanted to figure out what they could do on climate policy, and they started in a very thoughtful way by engaging the community, and the community through that engagement decided that the best solution that they could think of was to pass a local tax. So if the city had come to the community and said, "We want to tax you to support our climate initiatives," that never would've gone anywhere. But the idea for a tax really came from the deep and meaningful community engagement that the city embarked on. And so they passed a sales tax that generates a few tens of millions of dollars a year actually for local climate projects.
And they're investing those in projects that support equity and good quality jobs. And so we were really helping them. We came in right after the sales tax passed as they were designing the programs that they wanted to implement. So building decarbonization in a way that could really first and foremost address the needs of low income communities and make investments in building decarbonization that created good quality jobs for local workers including workers in the traditional trades like the plumbers and pipe fitters who very connected to the fossil fuel industry and weren't having the easiest time seeing opportunities in the decarbonization space. And so Denver and the way that they've been engaging with organized labor and designing their programs has really created opportunities for some of those workers. And so they have a huge staff now to implement this, and they continue to do that really meaningful labor and community engagement to really connect the dots, and they're implementing really, really cool and interesting climate projects with this equity and good jobs lens all across the city.
Yin Lu:
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I want to transition us to talking, and we talked about it a little bit already, but maybe a double click into just the history of when we talk about workforce development vis-a-vis energy jobs, how that looked in the 90s, how that looked in the 2000, 2010s, and now. History has a way of rhyming. So I'm curious to hear what has been consistent throughout the past decades, and what feels different now?
Betony Jones:
The energy sector is changing a lot as we are looking to decarbonize that leads to energy generation that's more decentralized from the traditional fossil fuel plants. There's more concern around energy security and resilience. If you think about the challenges that the energy system is facing today, it's really different from what our grandparents were doing. I think traditionally, when people think about energy, they might think about boring old utilities or the grid, the wires that connects your house to electricity or maybe the pipes underground. And energy today means so much more than that. We define it. It is electricity. It is fuels, but it's also the supply chain for electricity and for clean electricity like the manufacturing of solar panels, the manufacturing of batteries and electric vehicles and everything in between. And so the energy sector has gotten a lot more diverse in terms of the technologies that we work on and what we're trying to do.
In terms of the workforce, what we learned when we did this, when I was at UC Berkeley, and we did some real rigorous analysis looking at energy jobs, is that most of the energy jobs that we need going forward are in the construction arena. So building solar farms, building wind farms, building advanced nuclear facilities, building the hydrogen economy. A lot of this is probably two thirds to three quarters of the jobs are in construction because we just need to build so much infrastructure to support decarbonization. And then there's another big chunk of jobs in manufacturing, and this is because we're trying to onshore supply chains and develop more supply chain security in our energy system. And so we're looking at building the new factories for solar, for wind, for batteries and EVs here in the US. And so that's another big chunk of jobs, but not as large as the construction jobs.
And then we need engineers and scientists and people who are on the R&D space and can connect the latest and greatest technology to this scale, the processes to build that. So, for example, in the battery arena, we need a lot of engineers who understand battery chemistry, but also advanced manufacturing techniques and highly automated processes to help make these very, very precise components, battery cells that go into the batteries for electric vehicles and grid storage. And so there's all sorts of jobs and tech to really support the building of making of things where we've thought a lot about tech jobs as software jobs. Now we really need people in tech to help us figure out how to get the real stuff done, how to really build and make the stuff and do it fast and do it well and do it in a way that will maintain some competitive edge for these industries going forward. So it's a really exciting industry. I think when people think of energy, they might still be thinking of the old utilities, and certainly there's still a lot of utility jobs, but it's also so much more than that.
Yin Lu:
And when you think about developing a workforce that is going to meet the needs between building and manufacturing and engineering science and R&D, where do you feel like the most amount of your team's energy is going to?
Betony Jones:
Well, this is so exciting because DOE was historically a research and development agency. And so nearly all of our investments in workforce education and training were related to STEM education and training graduate students and undergraduate students in the science and in the technology and trying to build up that workforce. With the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law, DOE just developed a whole new appendage, which is huge, where with the bill, the bipartisan infrastructure law, we got $62 billion to focus on implementation through large demonstration and deployment projects. That's very, very different from R&D. That's taking everything that we've learned and trying to make it real quickly. And then through the loan's office scaling that and commercializing scaling the technology that has already proven to be viable commercially. And so that means that DOE and the way that we think about workforce education and training is much more focused.
The R&D stuff continues to be important, but we're also super focused on the deployment workforce, which again is a lot of jobs that don't require four year degrees, 85% of the jobs by certain projections. The researchers say that 85% of the jobs won't require four year degrees, their jobs in construction and their jobs in manufacturing. And so the real challenge and the thing that I spend the most time working on is how do we make sure that those jobs are good, that they're jobs that people want, that they want to grow in, make a career out of, that parents want their kids into these jobs? Blue collar work is still somewhat stigmatized in this country because we've thought of college as the reliable pathway to the middle class. So how do we make these construction and manufacturing jobs equally reliable pathways to the middle class where you can make a good living and work on these climate solutions?
And so that's really been our focus is as we're implementing these historic investments in clean energy, how do we make sure that employers are thinking upfront about the kinds of jobs they're creating, how they're going to be accessible to workers, and how they're going to be thinking about both attracting and retaining a skilled workforce to get the job done. If we think about demand supply dynamics, this is more of a demand signal to indicate to workers these are jobs. They're growing, there's a lot of them, we want you, and they will reward your investment.
Yin Lu:
And so we've already said this a few times, quality jobs with good pay and benefits are the key to the clean energy future. What does that mean to the DOE?
Betony Jones:
We actually have a definition, a formal definition, on our website. We have a community benefits plan frequently asked questions, which is guidance for people applying for DOE money on what do we mean when we say job quality. But to break it down, it has to do with wages. I'm not that worried about the energy sector's ability to attract and retain the skilled workforce that we need because the energy sector historically has been able to provide competitive wages, and I don't see that being any different going forward. We haven't seen a lot of growth in the energy sector for a while. We've seen a lot of growth in terms of job growth in the service sector, which tends to be lower wage and more precarious. If the jobs we're creating in the energy sector pay well, meaning above average, and ideally upper quartile for the region, for the industry, for the occupation, then we should be able to attract the workers that we need.
The hourly compensation isn't everything. Health insurance. Health insurance for one's family is really important. Retirement contributions and security is important. Workers need to know that their employers are invested in their development. So advancement opportunity, education and training is important. And then a huge priority of the Biden administration is making sure that workers have a voice on the job and that we as a federal government are supporting collective bargaining, worker organizing and collective bargaining, where we're sort of trying to balance that power between workers and employers in terms of business decisions that are made and how workers have a voice over the decisions that affect them. So those things are important, but there's other metrics to predictable schedules, getting enough hours, stable employment. Some workers like to travel. So then is there other travel expenses offered or per diems? Some workers would rather have a stable job in their community. So what are the options to meet workers where they are?
Yin Lu:
Can you talk more to workers having a voice, and is that tied to unions and the importance of unions in creating these jobs? And then maybe an add-on question to that is thinking about show me the money and how much people get paid as a very, very important indicator of someone's desire to stay at a job, do unions have a major part to play in setting wages, and what other contributing factors go into ensuring that wages stay competitive?
Betony Jones:
What a union is is workers coming together and identifying common cause, common interests, collective interests that they can then take to their employer and collectively bargain on. So say workers get together and they're really concerned about some of the health and safety violations in their workplace. A union provides that collective voice to take those concerns up to management and negotiate solutions for that. So that's one example of things that can affect workers on the job. How schedules are made is another. Wages and benefits and investments in education is another. So it really is just a way for workers to talk to each other, figure out what's really high priority, and then go with one voice to management to negotiate on behalf of members of the union. And it's important, I think, to realize that workers want their employers to succeed.
Unions want the businesses that they represent to succeed. And so it's not as antagonistic a relationship as I think we're often led to believe in the public discourse. Often, and a lot of employers that work with unions say this, it's a very positive relationship that improves productivity, improves stability, improves success in some cases, and ideally profitability and long-term competitiveness. So that's sort of what we mean by workers having a voice on the job that they're allowed to talk to each other, allowed to identify common interests, and that their employers will negotiate with them. And by law, those rights are protected, but often because we've all been taught to fear unions, and this is a very common perception, companies will hire consultants to dissuade unions, to dissuade workers from organizing and dissuade organizing efforts and try to prevent anything that would force collective bargaining or negotiations toward that.
So what we're looking for in our funding announcements are employers who are not just agreeing to uphold the law, we assume that that's a baseline, but that they're affirmatively looking for ways to support worker organizing and collective bargaining. So that could be a pledge to remain neutral, i.e., not hire a consultant to figure out how to dissuade workers from talking to each other. Or it could be even allowing union organizers access to the break room to talk to workers on their breaks. It can be any number of things. We also list them on our website where we're really looking for affirmative commitments to ensure that workers have a strong voice over the decisions that affect them.
Yin Lu:
How is a union formed and how did they become powerful?
Betony Jones:
Basically, workers come together. Sometimes there's an internal organizing effort where workers start talking to each other and decide to form a union independently. Sometimes an established union will provide support for that, and so a union will choose to affiliate with an existing union. Both have happened recently, but to have a formally recognized union, there's two different processes that are valid. One is by getting workers to sign union cards saying that they want to be part of a union. And once a majority of workers have signed union cards, the employer can accept that, voluntarily accept and recognize the union via, that's what you call card check.
And so often, one affirmative way that employers can support worker organizing and collective bargaining is to say we pledge to remain neutral in the face of an organizing effort, and we'll accept card check as a way of recognizing the union. That's one approach. The second approach is to hold an election that's overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, and that's a secret ballot election where workers vote whether they want to or don't want to join the union. And, again, if a majority votes for it, then the employer is legally required to acknowledge the union and enter into good faith negotiations. That's what typically can sometimes happen with the secret ballot election is that once you notify the employer that election will be held, they might sometimes try to dissuade workers from voting for the union. That tends to be a higher bar where sometimes employers engage in behavior to try to discourage, but, yes, votes for that.
There's certain benefits. We know that turnover is lower in unionized facilities, turnover is lower in more unionized states. Wages are sometimes higher. Sometimes it depends on the priorities of the workers. But another key thing about unions in this clean energy transition is that in the construction trades, unions contribute to education and training and to making sure that there's sustained and consistent education and training to constantly be building up the construction workforce. And that's done through a very robust system of registered apprenticeships where work dollars from workers' paychecks and from the employers go into fund this self-sustaining, privately funded system of workforce development at the tune of cash, I'm going to get it wrong, I think about $2 billion a year.
So this is a $2 billion workforce education and training system that is nearly completely privately funded, and it really builds and sustains skills in the construction workforce throughout periods of volatility in the industry. And so it helps a lot to be able to tap into that skilled workforce. Again, as I said in the beginning, we saw in the energy efficiency arena, the energy savings we were able to get was directly tied to the skill of the people doing the work. If you project that to the clean energy economy at large, we really do need highly skilled workers who can build infrastructure that works, that is safe, that will last, and that is a huge, huge benefit that we get from working with the construction unions.
Yin Lu:
And that the end of all of that has positive climate impact, but not leading with that at all. Right? It's creating economic mobility and stable jobs for people that will trigger this domino effect. And you said this was in the construction trades. Are we seeing similar directional shifts in the manufacturing trades as well?
Betony Jones:
Yeah. There's also very strong union training programs in the manufacturing space. UAW has very, very solid training that their employers benefit from. As we're looking at the electric vehicle transition, DOE is looking at skill standards in the battery manufacturing space as well. What do employers need, and can we identify some national training guidelines to provide certainty around the education and training curriculum that's going to be needed to support workers in the growth of that industry and support the industry itself? I would say that it's not as consistently well developed across all of manufacturing, but there are definitely some strong workforce education and training programs that the manufacturing unions invest in.
Yin Lu:
I think something that has become clear to me in an awe-inspiring way is the fact that you said private sector many times. Private companies pouring money into education and training that we're able to create this self-sustaining ecosystem where people have the ability to get trained throughout their careers so that they stay in the trades and get better and move up.
Betony Jones:
If you think about it, it makes sense. Employers benefit from and need skilled workers, and so it makes sense that they would contribute to that education and training. I think one of the problems when it's left up to the public sector is that there's a lot of guesswork around where job growth might be happening or what employers might be needing. And guesswork is not good in workforce development. It might inadvertently benefit employers. If you accidentally overtrain too many people for the jobs available, that sort of drives down wages. It changes that demand supply curve, so you have an oversupply of workers relative to the jobs available that tends to benefit the employer, not the worker. And so the guesswork, it can be a bit destabilizing for the workforce, for the labor market. And so having employers be at the table making investments in that skilling and upskilling of the workforce is pretty important to get it right.
Yin Lu:
What does success look like for you in this role over the next five years?
Betony Jones:
I want to make sure that these unprecedented investments in our clean energy future create broadly shared prosperity, create good quality family sustaining career opportunities for workers in the energy sector and also workers who've never had access to those kinds of jobs. And then in turn, build that broad will and support for more aggressive and bolder climate action. I want to get the wheel turning.
Yin Lu:
Wonderful. And on that note, Betony, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I sure learned a lot, and I'm going to process so many of the things that you said and integrate it into my thinking for the future.
Betony Jones:
It was so nice talking with you, Yin. Thank you.
Cody Simms:
Thanks again for joining us on My Climate Journey podcast. At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity. If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at mcjcollective.com. And if you have a guest suggestion, let us know that via Twitter at MCJ pod.
Yin Lu:
For weekly climate op-eds, jobs, community events, and investment announcements from our MCJ venture funds, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
Cody Simms:
Thanks, and see you next episode.
