“Climate is an important part of our lives and our industries. My job is to connect those jobs that are being created and those that have not been created with training and placement opportunities for 75 million workers in the United States,” says Taj Eldridge, managing director of climate innovation, JFFLabs.

WorkingNation sat down with Eldridge at JFF Horizons in New Orleans.

He says, “Connecting the workforce of today with the skills they need for the future is really important. We have to change the mindset. For us, what we believe is that it’s not just about degrees. It’s about skills-based learning.”

Eldridge continues, “Further, it’s about lifelong learning. We want people to realize that when you have these skills, when you have these certifications, you can add them on top of each other. So when you have new technologies that come out, there is an organic way of thinking that you really can tackle these problems and these solutions with this idea and approach of you’re going to always learn and you’re going to always build those skills.”

He says there are three areas of “low hanging fruit” in the green jobs space, including transportation, energy management, and “the way we put things on our bodies and in our bodies, clothing and food.”

Learn more about JFFLabs.