Latest / Clean Power Hour / Women in Solar Construction: Why the Industry Is Failing Them? #345

Transcript

Women in Solar Construction: Why the Industry Is Failing Them? #345 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Riley Neugebauer: I can say that one really large company a couple of years ago, shared internal data with me about their field staff that was they're not willing to be public about, but where less than 1% of their field employees were women. So that gives you a sense and other data I've seen from international or national sources points it around somewhere between three and 10% of the construction industry is made up of women. I find that hard to believe in solar myself.
• 1:17
  Riley Neugebauer: And then when you look at things like the solar job census, it's typically hovering around 25 to 30% of the whole workforce is made up of women.
• 1:28
  intro: The clean energy industry is moving fast. The deals are getting bigger. The technology is evolving, and the stakes have never been higher. Welcome to the Clean Power Hour, the podcast for solar, storage and micro grid professionals who want to stay ahead of it all each week, your host, Tim Montague, industry advisor and president of clean power consulting group brings you unfiltered conversations with the leaders actually building the energy transition. Now here's your host, Tim Montague,
• 2:03
  Tim Montague: today on the Clean Power Hour women in solar construction. My guest today is Riley Neugebauer. She is the founder of an organization called solar for women, that is helping women get into the trades, becoming electricians and installers and starting to level the playing field, I hope, because our industry has somewhat of a gender problem.
• 2:25
  Tim Montague: But welcome to the show.
• 2:26
  Riley Neugebauer: Riley, Hi, Tim, thanks for having me
• 2:30
  Tim Montague: pleasure to meet you and learn about your initiative. You are a very established solar professional in the southwest. You're in the Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, southwestern market and construction. My son was a solar installer for the first two years of his career in the solar industry. So I've, I've seen and heard the horror stories, you know, being out there in the elements, and I'm no stranger to solar construction sites myself, but it's it's not for everyone.
• 3:03
  Tim Montague: You're out there in the elements, it's cold, it's windy, it's rainy, it's muddy. You're on steep roofs, sometimes, if you're doing residential or many commercial buildings have sloped roofs. So it's not for the faint of heart, but Riley, in a few words, what is the problem, and why have you created solar for women as a solution to the problem?
• 3:29
  Riley Neugebauer: Yeah, thanks for asking the question. I think that I do want to say, just to your point, that it is definitely not the job for everyone, and I don't promote that idea either. It's got to be a good fit. But I feel that right now, women and girls are just not sort of provided the same career exposure and opportunities to the trades as men. That's partly because of cultural things. That's partly because of how the trades are stigmatized in K 12 education, especially for girls, I think that there's not a lot of welcoming places for women to sort of get access sometimes, because for them to just walk onto a job site and feel comfortable is maybe not so easy, and so we need sort of more access and inroads in that can be supportive and welcoming.
• 4:16
  Riley Neugebauer: And I think some of that comes from training, and some of that comes from the employers themselves doing the work to sort of build more welcoming workplaces and putting in the effort to try to diversify in lots of ways. And then I think there's simple things around PPE and workplace culture, you know, protective equipment that don't work well for women that could be worked on in the trades and yeah. So I think for us, where we're trying to focus as a nonprofit is, how do we start by sort of building more of a network of women in the solar trades and technical women, kind of at the core of the organization, and then extending out from there, you know, engage with other stakeholders, partners, funders, community colleges, other training entities, etc, just to kind of build a better network and a better place for women. And we also want to just sort of lift up the stories of women that are already out there in the trade, so that it becomes more normalized to helping celebrate that, and then do more around mentorship, and then advocacy data collection and advocacy work that will help sort of support more gender equity.
• 5:22
  Tim Montague: I love all of this, and you know, what's present for me is that we have a trades problem in America as well, right? We're we need a million new electricians. A lot of electricians are aging out.
• 5:35
  Tim Montague: They are considered the brain surgeons of the trades. There's a lot of math involved in being an electrician, for example. But so I think, you know, our educational system is very skewed towards college into.
• 5:50
  Tim Montague: Recently, right with the rise of AI, people are starting to realize that, well, maybe a path towards job security is to go into the trades, where robots will eventually take those jobs, but it's going to be a while.
• 6:04
  Tim Montague: And but, but, you know, I just think back to my own high school years, and yeah, I had access to taking wood shop and a small engine class and some exposure to the trades. But, you know, I didn't have friends who were, like, on a career path to become trades people. It was not discussed. And so there's that also but let's, let's take a, let's take a journey into the manifold problems that women face. If they are interested, let's just say they're from an early age, you know, from the teenage years into the 20s if they're interested in becoming a trades person. What are the barriers to entry for women?
• 7:01
  Riley Neugebauer: Yeah, I think when we're talking about sort of middle school to high school to college, there's a lot happening in that period, and some of the research I've seen points to the fact that girls actually perform equal to or better than boys on STEM type of classes and exams earlier on, like in middle school and even into high school, and then as they get into high school, that all starts to shift, where they kind of drop off, and that that lessons and sort of, there's some analysis there, right about what that means. And I think largely what that means, in my opinion, is we're socializing women to sort of step away from stem a lot of the time. It's not seen as cool, it's not seen as the thing they should be pursuing, et cetera. And so I'm not a research expert on that, but it seems interesting that that's what's happening. And then by the time they get to college, right? They're pursuing another track. And so we see pretty low numbers, even on that more academic side around math, science, etc, I would say that the trades are kind of like a different thing, even where, yes, you do need to care about math and science if you're going to be in the trades, but it's almost this other track that's a little bit parallel, where instead of just sitting at a desk or staring at a screen, you're engaging with the world actively with your hands, in addition to having to do problem solving all the time. And so for people who engage with the world or have traits that lend themselves well to sort of working with their hands and being more active, it's a great fit. And I don't think that has to do with being sort of intelligent or not. And I think that's part of what has been stigmatized in K 12 education.
• 8:31
  Riley Neugebauer: So that's one barrier. Is just like, there's already this drop off for women on the sort of math science side, the trades aren't even on the table most of the time for them to pursue as an option. They don't see women in the field, right? Like, if they go home and their parents have contractors over like, how often is that person going to be a woman? Hopefully that number is increasing, but over the last like 20 years, I feel like that number has not increased, hardly at all from the very little data that's out there. And that's part of the problem is we don't have good data, but it's just not common, and so they're not seeing it as a career path, and they don't. They're not getting sort of like pushed into in school, really, or seeing their friends do it often. The summer camps they have exposure to maybe aren't the kind where you're out there, like building stuff, although that has increased a lot more over time, which is great for girls. Yeah.
• 9:21
  Riley Neugebauer: So those are some of those early on barriers. And then from there, I think it's just like you get into some other career, and then you decide you want to get into the trades, let's say, like, how do you go about that if you don't have any exposure and you don't have any friends that do it, and you look around and it's like all these guys and and it's a bunch of men leading, and it seems kind of abrasive, maybe, and a little bit like sink or swim mentality, and that's just not that doesn't feel good to most people, but it's not something women are particularly interested in I don't think so.
• 9:54
  Tim Montague: Let's fast forward now and talk about the solar installation profession and companies. You're you work for unirack in technical sales and training, helping installers learn various and sundry racking products from unirac. But you're out there working with installers in the field, and so from a solar installation company perspective, and from an industry perspective, what is going on with women in solar?
• 10:27
  Tim Montague: What percentage of installers and electricians and laborers are women in the solar industry today.
• 10:37
  Riley Neugebauer: Yeah, and whatever I say is going to be sort of based on either anecdotal or my own experience, because there just isn't solid data on this. But I can say that one really large company a couple of years ago shared internal data with me about the.
• 10:49
  Riley Neugebauer: Field staff that was they're not willing to be public about, but where less than 1% of their field employees were women. So that gives you a sense and other data I've seen from international or national sources points it around somewhere between three and 10% of the construction industry is made up of women. I find that hard to believe in solar myself.
• 12:03
  Riley Neugebauer: And then when you look at things like the solar job census, it's typically hovering around 25 to 30% of the whole workforce is made up of women. But there's nothing really granular about like how much of that is HR versus marketing, versus versus installers, electricians, because they have pretty broad categories that they've they group things into, and it's, you could be an administrator within Project Management and not still be a technical person. So it doesn't really give me any great insight. But when the whole industry is only a quarter to a third, and I think the construction side is more like one to 3% then we have a lot of room to grow there. You know,
• 12:46
  Tim Montague: I worked for a big electrical contractor in the Chicago area for four years, and I didn't meet a single female electrician in that time. We had some project managers that were women, for sure, they were a minority, maybe 10 to 20% of the PMs were women, but literally zero of the electricians that I ran into, they had 100 electricians. It was a big company. So if you know, so there's clearly a opportunity women, you know, at the University of Illinois, it's very interesting. Major engineering school, top five engineering school, more than 50% of the engineering students are women at the University of Illinois now. So women are thriving in STEM in university settings. It's not necessarily translating into the labor force, and that's, I guess, one of the one of the challenges and opportunities. But how do you approach this at solar for women? What is the paradigm, so to speak, that you have identified and and what is the path forward to incentivize and help more women get interested, and then help more companies create a woman friendly work environment.
• 14:15
  Riley Neugebauer: Yeah, I have a lot of ideas, and I think some of that's captured in our our kind of vision for long term outcomes. But because we're so new. I wouldn't say that any of us have like the explicit solution, but I think that we have a lot of a sense of it. And so, for example, to name another entity that's doing a lot of this, GRID Alternatives trains, a lot of women, a lot of the women I know in the solar construction workforce came out of grids programs. And I think it's because they do a really good job of training with a diverse staff that they themselves have doing the training that sort of demonstrates this diversity piece and equity piece that makes it welcoming, and they do a good job of training from the ground up, so people in the experience can get access to tools and things and feel they can build their confidence, so them, plus remote energy also has a lot of women focused programs. Sei has some women's lab programs where it's taught by women, for women, remote energy is similar. Remote has done a lot of work overseas as well, and done a lot a lot of training of women in places like Kenya and other parts of Africa, and had a lot of success. So I think we have a lot of examples to point to that show that if you can offer spaces that are welcoming and led by women and are for women, you will build a better network, and you will get these people out into the workforce. Do I have exact stats on the people coming in versus the people that end up in the workforce? No, some of those organizations might, but I know from attending some of those things and from seeing the people who are out there and where they came from, that these are success stories. So I think that's pretty established as a thing that is a good idea. And then as far as how to work directly with employers, I think that's a big question, and one that that women in trades, organizations across the country, like Chicago, women in trades Vermont works for women, etc, have been doing this for years, where they do things like gender equity workshops with employers to help them learn like, how do you create a culture that's more diverse and more welcoming to women, and that can include things like, Do you have women in leadership? Do you have women in the organization in these roles that you hope to diversify, and if so, how do you tell those stories? And how do you even make sure that, like Don't fake it. But does your marketing even show any women doing any of the things at your company? And if not, maybe that's a problem. And so how do you sort of live it, but also tell the story about it, so that those who are external to your company that.
• 16:41
  Riley Neugebauer: Might want to work there. When they look at your website, if they look at your materials, they see people that look like themselves, that want to work there, you know, and feel more drawn to it. So that's part of it. I think things like employee resource groups can help. Like, how do you build these kind of affinity groups within your company that help whatever that more marginalized group might be to to have ways to connect and have direct access to HR or whatever is needed, to kind of create more support networks. I think that's important. I think mentorship is really important.
• 17:13
  Riley Neugebauer: Does that always have to be like a woman with another woman? No, I've had a lot of mentors on the electrical side. I have my electrical license in Colorado, my residential license that I got while I was a namaste solar a couple of years ago, and I would say partly because there just aren't that many women in the field. Most of my mentors on the electrical side were men, right that were crew leads and already had their license and had the patience to work with me. It's not that I think you only can learn from other women, but I think by having more women and building that pipeline and creating mentorship that feels welcoming, that's really important.
• 17:50
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I totally agree. It's a both hand, right?
• 17:53
  Tim Montague: You need women at all levels and positions to help create a woman friendly environment. I'm also thinking about how the world in general, just like isn't necessarily friendly to things like being a mother. It's not that friendly to being a father, but it's even less friendly to being a mother. You know, construction work tends to start at 7am in the morning, and you're you're trying to get the kids off to school. How, you know, what, if you're a single mother, how does that work logistically for you? And so I think that society is going to have to make some accommodations and be more flexible that you know, that could definitely be a barrier to entry, but the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over 10 gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS product lineup includes string inverters ranging from 25 kW to 350 kW. Their flagship inverter, the CPS 350 KW is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. CPS is the world's most bankable inverter brand, and is America's number one choice for solar plants, now offering solutions for commercial utility ESS and Balance of System Requirements.
• 19:28
  Tim Montague: Go to Chintpowersystems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more, who are the who is your target audience. Let's talk about that like when you think about, okay, you're creating a beacon now of information, and, you know, developing relationships with installers and industry groups and, but, but who, who are you trying to get into the organization, and how are they engaging with you?
• 20:00
  Riley Neugebauer: Yeah, it's good question. I think obviously the primary audience right now is solar trades, women that are already out there in the field and working, or folks that would like to get into the solar trades and identify as women.
• 20:13
  Riley Neugebauer: And we're open to sort of non binary and trans folks, of course, too. And so that's kind of a big core of it. But I would say extending past just the installers, electricians, et cetera, and those that want to be we also are interested in that kind of next layer out of technical folks, like project managers, designers, engineers, that also want to find community with other peers that are in roles more like them, and other more technical folks so who identify as women, I think that's important. And then broader than that, right? We want to work with them and employers, right? Most of these employers are dominated by men who run them, who all of it HR folks are often women. So that's some of the group we've we've talked with our recruiters and talent folks who work for companies too, but in terms of employers that want to maybe shift their culture or do a better job of recruiting a more diverse workforce, either because they see that as we just need more bodies in the door, and so therefore we need to open up our doors to more people and figure out how to do that, or because they see diversity as equaling better financial outcomes and better like, harmony within the workforce, leadership, etc, like, Whatever the reason, which, I think there are many reasons then, then those folks would be great to work with, too and talk about, I think, one of the key audiences that I would like to talk to more now, while we're so new and trying to find funding and all those things and don't have a lot of capacity, would be, how do we share some case studies of the employers who are already doing it, who's out there? That has a diverse workforce that wants to talk about why they care about it, what they've seen as a result, and how they did it, so that other people could learn from them, and start to build a little bit of a like a learning community within employers, I think, would be helpful, and then build out more of the programmatic piece down the road of like, okay, you want to get there. Let's work together to figure that out. And then beyond that, I think the the audience is, you know, Mission aligned, partner organizations. It's the media, it's other employers, it's education entities, it's contractors, it's any industry partners and manufacturers that are interested in this. Yeah, it kind of just extends out, I think of the nucleus as these solar trades women and then you just like, ripple out from there with a lot of other stakeholders that that matter.
• 22:29
  Tim Montague: So let's talk about the existing success stories yourself. How did you get interested in becoming a solar installer and electrician, and what are the stories that you're learning about talking to other women who are already established in the trades in our industry, sure.
• 22:49
  Riley Neugebauer: So I was interested. I went to school. I got a bachelor's degree in environmental studies from Allegheny College in western pa where I'm from originally, and through that, I graduated from there in oh four. And so that was back in the days of the startup of Energy Action Coalition, and a lot of work around climate was really starting to pop up amongst youth and college folks. And so I was pretty plugged into that, and was an environmentalist, and so I had this desire to do work that was around change making in the environment, and would do something about climate change and some of these big issues. So that was a real driver for me, and renewable energy caught my attention pretty early on, even in college. And so after college, I was doing community organizing work in the northeast around getting out the vote for the environment and renewable energy campaigns on campuses themselves and working with students. So I kind of had this like interest, and was on the the outside of it a little bit, and then became a sustainability coordinator in higher education.
• 23:47
  Riley Neugebauer: I did that both at Skidmore College and American University.
• 23:50
  Riley Neugebauer: Worked with students more, and there was interest in renewables there and doing work there. So I just kept learning more. I eventually realized, like, I'm the kind of person that really needs to sort of be engaged in the world in a different way, with my hands and my mind, not just one, and staring at the screen all day. And so I look my dad and my brother are both in the trade, so pretty familiar to me, coming from a rural place as well. So I started exploring the options, and solar just made the most sense. So I pursued a one year solar certificate at San Juan College in northern New Mexico back in 2007 and from there, you know, it wasn't exactly a linear path, but I worked for a solar hot water installer for a year after that program, and then did some other non profit work, and then ended up out east doing farming for a long time. And then I came back to Colorado six years ago and got back into solar, and that was when it really kind of launched, because the industry was a little bit easier. A little bit easier to get into then. So since then, I've pretty much been doing solar hands on work for four years. And I didn't even know I could get my electrical license at first, I just wanted to do solar, so I started on the solar side, and then an electrician that was subcontracting with the place I worked recruited me to come work for him. Kind of filled me in on how that worked. Became an apprentice, started doing whole house wiring and solar, and then eventually went to Namaste, where I was able to just focus full time on being an installer and get my residential license.
• 25:17
  Riley Neugebauer: So, yeah, I mean, that's the journey for me. It's very fulfilling to be out in the field and work on a team that works well together and and build something that you physically see in front of you, and I'm not afraid of heights on the roof and all that. So it worked for me. But other women, I would
• 25:33
  Tim Montague: say, oh, go ahead.
• 25:33
  Tim Montague: I would guess having exposure as a child to the trades, like the fact that your dad was in the trades, was somewhat of a foundation for you, but you're obviously a very capable, intelligent person, and you could probably do anything you want to do. But becoming after, after, you know, an academic career, I mean, you know, working at several universities and then becoming a field installer is like so different, but I'm just curious, like, what were the challenges that you had to overcome to achieve that success?
• 26:16
  Riley Neugebauer: One of the things that's happened to me a lot is people kept trying to push me into the office work, because they can see that I can do it, you know, whether that's the site visits and then coming back and doing all the paperwork or utility permitting and stuff.
• 26:29
  Riley Neugebauer: I did a lot of that early on, and then when I and it was based on a conversation where I wanted to be in the field, but they needed help with this other stuff. So I'll do the other stuff as long as I get to go out. The field because I didn't have a lot of skill at the time, and I had to sort of fight for it. I had to continuously be like, I just, can you stop making me do all of this so that I then don't have time to do this other stuff, while in the meantime, you're hiring guys to come do the trades work right in front of me. So it caused some conflict there, and I had a boss at one point say, tell me that basically I had no natural ability and I can't figure anything out. And that was after working for him for probably, like, a year, and him hiring two guys, and it just felt, I mean, it was incredibly disempowering, and it's really hard, because you already have some amount of imposter syndrome, and don't feel like you fit in and feel like people are staring at you.
• 27:22
  Riley Neugebauer: And so that was probably one of the hardest things that happened, because I was just so passionate about trying to make this happen, you know, and take pay cuts and know that I'm not making the money I could be if I was out doing academic things, but also knowing that this work is more fulfilling for me, and that there was a path that I could see where it would bring me a certain amount of success financially, potentially too. So So anyway, all that to say that was really hard, but I just sort of, I left that company, and I went on to places like namaste that were much more supportive and really helped me achieve the goals I wanted, and made me feel like I could do it, and had mentors. And so I think that made a big difference. But I have friends to your question earlier, who are single moms, who are in the trades, and I think they have found places to work that have been more flexible. For example, if you're on resi solar crews, often you go to the shop, you get the van loaded, and then you go to site, and there's often, like, an hour caught up in that, maybe not that much, depending on how far you're driving. But if the company can say, Okay, we know you have kids, we really value who you are and what you bring to the table, where we want to diversify, etc, some of them are allowed to show up at the site, not come to the shop first thing in the morning, because the other three people can do that, you know. So it's like there are ways to make this work for people, but companies do have to be willing to kind of help a little bit.
• 28:46
  Tim Montague: It occurs to me that there are kind of two factors here that we're trying to marry. We've got companies, and the profile of companies, you mentioned Namaste, being more friendly to females in general. And I think that's very important, right? How companies see the world. And you know, we have a labor shortage in the United States, so we want to figure out new and better ways to adapt and adopt to the circumstances. And then there's the individuals. And I'm curious on both sides, when you think about the profiles, because I have this paradigm of, there are ones, twos and threes. The ones get it, the twos will get it with some education, and the threes are never going to get it. Move on. Focus on the ones and twos. Ones and twos as companies, ones and twos as individuals. And, you know, I think of, okay, if you're a tomboy, for example, you like playing outdoors, and you're more rough and tumble than maybe the average woman. That's a sign. That's a personality trait. If you like working with your hands, if you're you know, if you like building things, if you're very interested in being in that part of the the world.
• 30:05
  Tim Montague: So but when you think about this, like, what is, what are the profiles that you see for success? Because not everyone's going to, you can't just willy nilly say, Oh yeah, we're just going to take 10% of our women in and push hard on them to become tradespeople. There's some DNA, I think, in these people that makes them more likely. For example, athletics, too, occurs to me. If you're an athlete, you're already out there being physical on the field and there, and that translates, to some extent, into construction.
• 30:43
  Riley Neugebauer: Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't really thought about it quite like this before, but, but I would say I'm hesitant to fully sort of stereotype people around certain things. But I would say, for example, I know cosmetologists that have gotten into the trades because they like working with their hands, and they like, you know, it's a fit for them. And so there's some really girly folks out there on social media and stuff that succeed in the trades because it's a fit for them. So I think that that's a tough one to sort of navigate, because I think it can be appealing to people for different reasons, but I would say being athletic and using your body right? Like, if you're someone who enjoys being outside a lot, if you're someone who likes working with your hands and likes working with your body in some way. I think athletics can be one marker that sort of points you in a direction, for sure. Some trades, you're indoors a lot more of the time. So I think there are trades avenues for people that don't have to mean you're like, up high and like in all the elements. But for solar people like rock climbers are a great fit. It. You know, I see a lot of rock climbers on the roof and solar that are guys, and I think that could apply to women too, because I know a ton of females that rock climb out out here, there's a ton and out East and elsewhere. So that's one. So yeah, the athletic piece, the outdoor piece, you got to have a little grit, right? You got to be able to sustain yourself through some tough conditions and some tough environments, whether that's mental or physical. Ideally, that wouldn't be the case, but it is the case in terms of the mental part, I think that there is a piece around sort of like active in the moment, dynamic problem solving, like, if you do not thrive in that environment and you do not like that, that's tough, because the trades are full of just times where you have to figure it out, and it's not ideal, and there's weird holes in the attic you got to get into, and you got to figure out how to drill this hole or do this thing or pull this wire, and you got to be able to do stuff a lot of times and in different ways and work with your team and stuff. So I think that matters a lot too. I would also argue though, that for entry level folks, there's plenty of jobs where, where you're learning, where it's not really that hard. You're just kind of out there, like going through the motions and getting a lot of repetition, especially on the commercial or utility scale, they can give you some access, at least, to the industry that's not quite the same as residential solar. So I think there's different paths there, too, for different types of people. What else, I think you have to have a little bit of a risk tolerance that's higher than maybe the normal person, not just because of the heights, but because of electrical like, if you're going to go into electrical work in any way you it's not that you're being dangerous, but, like, it's just inherently a little bit more dangerous than, than other things, than some of the other trades, but you're using less, like saws for cutting so in some ways it's safer, and in other ways it's a little bit more dangerous. So um, yeah, just thinking through, if you're going to pursue the trades, why one thing over another might be more appealing to you? That's why I like the programs out there that give people the like, eight weeks where you do like, three or four different trades, and you kind of get to try different things and see what you like, because that, I think, makes a lot of sense for new folks. Yeah, I don't know that's kind of a good list, but yeah, I would say otherwise. I think girly people can do it non girly people can do it like it just depends on whether you enjoy work like that, and you like to if you're in solar, if you like being outside most of the time.
• 34:07
  Tim Montague: So was there an aha moment for you when you realized that you needed to fulfill this mission
• 34:18
  Riley Neugebauer: with a nonprofit? You mean, yeah? Or just me, yeah, yeah, when my boss told me that thing that was really disempowering, I thought maybe I was going to give up on the whole the whole thing for myself personally, and just stopped trying to be an electrician and all that. And so that was really hard for me, and I felt at the time like I didn't have much support, like I didn't have people to talk to, I didn't have people to I didn't have people to talk to that would understand, I guess, because they weren't in the trades, they weren't like me that hadn't experienced this. So that put me into motion around, how do I find some other women in the trade? So I can at least start having a little bit of a place to vent or commiserate? And that led to me creating a Facebook group. And this was probably four, four and a half years ago now that I did that, and that group still exists. That was kind of the beginning of all this. We now have, I don't know, 100 or 200 people in that group, and it's, it's mostly folks in the US, and they're either people who are in the trades in solar. Used to be in the trades in solar, are technical trainers in solar, et cetera. It's like that kind of an audience, and so that's been super helpful, because then I found some of my friends I have now and other people that still help with solar for women things, and it gave me a community to talk to and to hear, like, how did you all overcome some of these things? And it's always a little bit different for everyone, but there's certainly some patterns there too. So I think that was the moment.
• 35:49
  Tim Montague: So if you're listening to this and you want to get more involved in this or in your organization, or just getting more women into the solar industry, what is your advice to company owners and managers and women who are looking for opportunity or career paths. What? How do they engage with either solar for women or this greater phenomenon of getting more women into the industry?
• 36:20
  Riley Neugebauer: Yeah. So if you want to stay in the loop with us about what we're up to.
• 36:22
  Riley Neugebauer: You can follow solar for women and or me on LinkedIn is where I probably have the most sort of following right now. You can go to solarforwomen.com and sign up for our newsletter, which is on the bottom of the website, pretty easy, just your name and your email and. And we are doing a series of webinars right now.
• 36:39
  Riley Neugebauer: You could hop on those if you wanted to. They're free. Yeah, so those are some really easy ways. And we're on Facebook and Instagram as well. Under solar for women's, you can find us there. And then I would say, give us some grace if you're asking for a lot of detailed information or something, because I'm I have a full time job, and I'm doing this as the passion project on the side. We don't have a lot of money. We don't have any staff. It's all volunteer. So you can help us by donating money. You can help us by reaching out and sort of, yeah, just helping build the network. Now, while we get some of our programs going, if you have a really good idea about something you think we should do, or you're a company that really wants to be, you know, the shining star, definitely reach out and let me know. The industry is kind of in a weird place right now with hiring in general, so that makes it a little bit hard to have this conversation in this moment. But I think, generally speaking, like we want to have the long term vision towards more diversity, so we want to find those folks, and then if you're a woman that's trying to get into the industry, I think there's actually think there's actually a fair amount of resources you can join. We have a monthly trades women call that's just for solar trades women. So if you want to be added to the list for that, let me know. You can ask to be in the Facebook group, same, just for women who are sort of in the trades in solar. So those are aspects that are tied directly to that. And then if you're trying to get training, we don't have it yet. We hope to in the future, but you have options through remote energy GRID Alternatives. Sei places that can do and do offer sort of women focused training. So check those resources out as well.
• 38:19
  Tim Montague: Yeah, Sei is a great organization, also based in Colorado, and I think they have some training specifically for women now, right?
• 38:27
  Riley Neugebauer: Yep, yeah, I attended their women's lab a couple years ago. It was great.
• 38:32
  Tim Montague: Hey, guys, are you a residential solar installer doing light commercial, but wanting to scale into large CNI solar? I'm Tim Montague. I've developed over 150 megawatts of commercial solar, and I've solved the problem that you're having you don't know what tools and technologies you need in order to successfully close 100 KW to megawatt scale projects.
• 38:56
  Tim Montague: I've developed a commercial solar accelerator to help installers exactly like you just go to cleanpowerhour.com click on strategy and book a call today. It's totally free with no obligation. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate you listening to the pod, and I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Go to clean power hour and click strategy today. Thanks so much. All right. Well, I want to thank Riley Neugebauer for coming on the show. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com.
• 39:27
  Tim Montague: Tell a friend about the show.
• 39:31
  Tim Montague: That's the single best thing you can do to help others find this content. There are millions of people that don't know about the Clean Power Hour. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true so and please come find me at a trade show. I travel to trade shows on a monthly basis. I'll be at both the shows in Chicago this year, the inner solar Midwest, and then re plus Midwest. I'll be at ACP in Houston. I will, of course, be at the CPS event in Dallas if this drops before that, and with that. Riley, how else can our listeners find you?
• 40:09
  Riley Neugebauer: Yes, please look me up on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, those are probably the best avenues. And check out our website, solar for women. Calm and I want to say thanks to Jenny harez for making this connection between Tim and I.
• 40:23
  Tim Montague: I'm Tim Montague, let's grow women in solar.
• 40:25
  Tim Montague: Thanks so much. Thank you.