Before Tavorean Johnson came to Louisiana Green Corps, he was working at a chain store and, in his words, “didn’t have [a] career plan.”
Today, he works for Rotolo Consultants, Inc. (RCI), where his days have included everything from irrigation and landscaping to traveling across Louisiana and neighboring states for projects. He is learning new skills, taking on more responsibility and already thinking about what comes next.
“I made so much progress in life,” Johnson told me. “I’m a whole new person now. I leveled up.”
His journey is a great example of what can happen when the right people and organizations work together — and why the Greater New Orleans Foundation launched the Construction Sector Partnership.
At its simplest, a sector partnership brings companies in the same industry together with the organizations preparing people for those jobs. Employers identify shared workforce challenges, training providers bring their expertise and understanding of local talent, and together they build practical solutions that neither could create as effectively alone.
For Louisiana Green Corps, that connection addresses a challenge Executive Director Ryan Mattingly knows well.
Louisiana Green Corps prepares young adults for careers in construction, infrastructure and related fields while helping participants overcome barriers that can stand between training and employment. But even strong training does not automatically lead to the right job.
“We have great employer partnerships,” Mattingly explained, “but we needed a more reliable and systematic way to place our graduates with those employers.”
In May, GNOF and its partners helped open that door, bringing six construction companies together with job seekers from nine education and training providers for an interview and hiring day. Nearly 60% of participants moved forward in the interview process, leading to at least 12 hires.
One of them was Tavorean.
He remembers interviewing with RCI’s Division Manager Ethan Oddo.
“I crushed the interview,” he recalled with a laugh. RCI wanted to hire him on the spot. “He gave me the hat and everything. I was just so excited.”
But RCI’s role began well before the interview and hiring day. The company has consistently shown up as an employer partner — helping Louisiana Green Corps participants prepare through mock interviews, sharing what employers are looking for and working alongside other construction companies to strengthen the industry’s talent pipeline.
That kind of involvement matters. A sector partnership works best when companies aren’t simply asked to hire at the end of the process but help shape the pathway from the beginning.
And RCI’s investment continues once someone is hired. Tavorean has worked on different kinds of projects, traveled for jobs and built new skills, with opportunities to keep advancing.
“There’s a lot of runway here,” RCI Project Executive John Tipton said. “If you can get the basics down and stick with it, there’s always an opportunity to move up.”
That is ultimately what we want sector partnerships to create: more runway.
As my colleague Jacob Robinson, who leads the foundation’s convening in construction, puts it, “Our job isn’t to create another workforce program. It’s to help employers, training providers and community partners work together differently — so that local companies can find the talent they need and more local people can build careers right here in our region.”
Tavorean is already moving. He wants to continue building skills, earning certifications and potentially getting his commercial driver’s license to open the door to another promotion.
He also talks proudly about seeing places he has helped improve around the city.
“You just feel good about knowing that you’re helping out around the city,” he said. “You can say, ‘I’ve done this,’ or ‘I’ve done that.’”
One successful hire will not solve our region’s workforce challenges. But it shows us what is possible.
A talented young person. A training organization committed to preparing and supporting him. An employer willing to invest in local talent, and a table where they can find one another.
That is the promise of sector partnerships — and it is a model we are excited to keep building across Greater New Orleans.