The right place, the right time, with an eye for opportunity, a commitment to economic growth for all and the will to get things done. That's entrepreneur Kameale Terry, co-founder of ChargerHelp, a Los Angeles startup.
It is tackling a modern problem – the sorry state of public electric vehicle charging stations – while training an often-overlooked workforce for jobs in a growing sector of the economy.
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Billions of dollars are being invested in building a national electric vehicle charging network, and billions more in California. However, outside of Tesla's supercharging network, equipment deployed by several charging companies has proven unreliable, with more than 20% of total chargers out of service at any given time.
Without reliable public chargers, it will be harder to persuade people to buy electric vehicles to fight climate change and reduce pollution.
Charger companies say they are working hard to fix the reliability problem, increasing their own repair and maintenance capabilities, providing more training and turning to third-party companies like ChargerHelp.
The charger industry is full of young companies hoping to stand out in a rapidly growing market. ChargerHelp, with $21 million in venture capital funding, has developed software programs for charger maintenance and repair. Unlike many competitors, the company also trains workers for network operations and field repair, with a focus on people and communities long overlooked during previous periods of economic and technological change.
ChargerHelp “is creating great jobs, with an orientation toward overall and racial diversity,” said David Epstein, CEO of Unreasonable Group, which matches startups with investors. But ChargerHelp isn't just a do-gooder organization, he said. “They have a great business model from a cash flow perspective.”
Like many entrepreneurs in what has been called “clean technology,” the opportunities were somewhat surprising. Terry's story counts as an example of how good luck favors the prepared mind.
He grew up in South Los Angeles. Her large family placed a lot of importance on commitment and hard work. It was worth it. He has risen quickly in any organization he is a part of. Motivated by the idea of financial success, she accepted a job at a bank near Philadelphia. She started as a part-time teller and ended up as a commercial bank manager.
I loved Philadelphia. “One of the best things is that there are so many black people,” he said on the Founders Unfound podcast shortly after founding ChargerHelp in 2019. He visited his cousin Ray, who worked in Washington, D.C., on Capitol Hill . “Everyone was like a geek and it was crazy to see black wealth concentrated like that,” he said. He was inspiring.
Her mother's recurring cancer brought her back to Los Angeles in 2016. Saving energy to care for someone, she took a relatively easy job handling customer service calls at EV Connect, a small company that makes software for charging stations. Soon, the growing company asked him to create a call center and customer experience department.
“Charging stations would just have these problems,” he said. At the time, charger companies relied heavily on expensive electricians to fix what turned out to be software problems, on equipment they were not trained to handle. In practice, there was little awareness of the need for a job called “electric charger technician.”
“It would be great to have a workforce that wanted to do that,” he said.
She left to work as a consultant at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, where she founded ChargerHelp. Her first contract was with Southern California Edison to work on electric school bus chargers. The company took off from there.
Terry “is a superstar who is able to share a vision to get people together and make things happen,” said Matt Petersen, the incubator's executive director. “Her story and Evette's story is a hero's journey for us.”
Evette is Evette Ellis, a workforce development expert that Terry met at LACI and with whom he felt an immediate connection. After seeing Ellis in action, Terry brought her to ChargerHelp and was so impressed that she made Ellis a co-founder of the company.
ChargerHelp's founders are Southern California natives: Evette Ellis, left, grew up in Compton and Kameale Terry in South Los Angeles.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Ellis, who grew up in Compton, wasn't sure at first. “These white people, clean scientists, they're good people and they're going to save the world, but I didn't necessarily see myself in that space.”
But she fit in perfectly. In the podcast interview, Terry said that cleantech executives “talk a lot about equity, and it's really cool to be a part of that.”
As a teenager, Ellis remembers, he watched a woman behind the counter of a daycare at a park with a pool who was obviously in charge, telling other people what to do. “That was my first introduction to the idea that there is work and then there are the people who provide it.” She asked to be hired and by the end of the summer she had become the program coordinator.
Ellis earned her job training skills in the federal Department of Labor's Job Corps program, whose historic mission is to train people who don't plan to go to college for jobs in that sector. Like Terry, she joined LACI as a consultant.
At ChargerHelp, Ellis set out to create a certified training program for charger technicians, working closely with SAE International, the organization that sets standards for the motor vehicle industry. Training lasts approximately six weeks prior to field deployment.
Beyond the technical material, Ellis emphasizes the importance of attitude. Graduating from a training program to a new job is an important step that not only affects new employees but also future graduates. “If you don't give it your all, you're really burning a huge bridge,” she says.
A field technician does not need to know software code to do the job. What is needed is a basic understanding of how electricity works, how electric vehicle chargers work, how electric vehicles work, how to operate software programs on a computer or smartphone in conjunction with remote experts in an operations center. grid. Federally certified safety training is an important part of the program, Ellis said.
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The type of work that ChargerHelp is trained for (combining familiarity with computer software, basic knowledge of electricity and electronics, and a reasonable degree of manual dexterity) will become increasingly common as software continues to infiltrate computer hardware. everyday life, from Ring doorbells to personal robots and apps on a car dashboard screen.
High school graduates can do it; So can those who graduate from college but may lack skills that match what employers are looking for.
Heaven Holmes of Fresno graduated from Cal State Dominguez Hills with a degree in psychology and criminal justice last year and was back home looking for work when her mother saw Terry being interviewed on the local television news. Her mom said, “There's an African-American woman on TV hiring here.” Something about repairing the charger. Holmes applied, trained and became a technician at ChargerHelp.
“I didn't know what to expect, but I'm curious and will always want to gain more knowledge,” he said. Every day is a new challenge, she said.
He is happy to be in an industry with a future and the opportunity to advance. “The world is changing and these jobs are not as discreet as you might think. “People get excited when they see a charger that has been broken for months working.”
EV charger field technicians earn between $20 and $60 per hour, concentrated in the $35 to $40 range. Certified electricians earn even more. So far, ChargerHelp has trained 1,000 workers and recently started a program to train the trainers for other companies and workforce development organizations.
ChargerHelp, of course, is far from the only company that develops charger software and trains workers to use it. Charging network companies like Flo, ChargePoint and Electrify America are expanding their own training programs.
So are charger manufacturers, including ABM. “It is important to raise awareness of the general trades throughout the United States,” said Mark Hawkinson, president of technical solutions at ABM. “We are seeing a depletion of skills on how to maintain critical infrastructure. Our schools no longer teach shopping. “We need to get back to those basics.”
Even companies that have relied for decades on fossil fuel supplies have been moving rapidly toward electric vehicle charging, including gas pump installer and maintainer Owl Services. “We've seen an increase in calls for technicians, particularly in the Los Angeles market,” said Owl Vice President Dave Patrick. Los Angeles represents “the biggest growth potential” for the company right now.
Detroit's Marcus Glenn was recently trained by ChargerHelp but is keeping his options open. He was working at an automotive heating and air conditioning supplier when he signed up to learn about charger repair. He successfully completed the course but continues with his current job, for now. The automotive industry is undergoing drastic changes and layoffs are a constant threat. Glenn likes knowing that he is prepared for the future. “It's good to have some kind of stability. “I’ll look for those opportunities and see where this leads.”
Recommend the move to others. “If you are curious, be a curious cat. Go find out. There are many ways to enter this industry. “There will always be work.”
