In a nutshell:
- TVA is focused on engaging students earlier, removing barriers to employment and leveraging powerful partnerships with internal and external stakeholders to ensure we have the workforce needed to power the Valley region for future generations.
- Representatives from across the enterprise make up the Workforce Strategy and Development Core Team which will share ideas, provide insights and identify solutions to overcome challenges, ensuring workforce development alignment at TVA.
- The newly launched W&SD Portal will collect current and future workforce development efforts taking place throughout the enterprise. Enter your efforts into the portal and help drive TVA’s workforce development strategy and future investments.
- The Workforce Development Dashboard provides transparency and creates a way to identify gaps, helping us focus attention on areas of need. Visit to find events and opportunities taking place in your region.
More than likely, you’ve heard about TVA’s big plans to meet the energy needs of the future for the Tennessee Valley region. TVA is planning and investing in meeting these future needs in many ways, including our workforce development efforts.
TVA’s Workforce Optimization project set out to assess future needs, grow our workforce pool, expand our partnerships and ensure we have the right talent to meet the future energy needs of the Valley region. One of the outcomes from Workforce Optimization was the creation of TVA’s Workforce Strategy and Development (WS&D) team, who is tasked with addressing the long-term talent needs.
“Our region is facing an unprecedented demand for workers and contractors that simply can’t be met with our current pipelines of talent,” said Director of Workforce Strategy and Development Jamie Choate. “Our team is focused on engaging students earlier, removing barriers to employment and leveraging powerful partnerships with internal and external stakeholders.”
Our approach: Aligned, flexible and innovative
Across TVA, incredible workforce development efforts are taking place, however those efforts have never been formally tracked, so the WS&D team was tasked with developing a strategic and aligned approach to how TVA invests in reaching and engaging our future workers.
“Once we started looking into what was already happening throughout TVA, we knew our strategy needed to be flexible to allow BUs to continue their successful efforts, but we saw an opportunity for sharing that information,” Jamie said. “This is why our Core Team is so vital to TVA’s workforce development strategy. Core Team representatives from across the enterprise will share ideas, provide insights and identify solutions to overcome challenges so we are able to strategically invest in efforts that match our future workforce needs.”
The WS&D Core Team members are:
- Jamie Choate, Director of Workforce Strategy and Development
- Brittany Hanks, Sr. Program Manager, WS&D
- Kaleb Owens, Workforce Development Specialist
- Alex Sadler, Economic Development
- Althea Jones, Public & Community Engagement
- Andrew Craig, Cybersecurity
- Brandy Hendren, TPS Field
- Deanna Fults, Gen Projects & Fleet Services
- Elliot Scott, Talent Acquisition
- Emily Vastano, Power Operations
- Jana Sublett, Community Relations North (KY)
- Joel Wise, TPS Ops
- John Crawford, CNO Nuclear
- Lana Moore, Regional Relations East
- Lyndsay Sneckenberger, Financial Services
- Mark Brown, Community Relations South
- Martha Swindle, Community Relations Southwest
- Millie Callaway, External Stakeholders & Regulatory Oversight
- Sam Caviness II, Customer Service Engineer
- Scarlett Graham, Communications
- Tracy Hightower, Gen Projects & Fleet Services
- Virginia Gray, Community Relations North (TN)
Measuring our success
Measurement is essential to understanding progress and success, but in order to measure our efforts, the WS&D team had to find a way to collect the current and future workforce development efforts taking place. That’s where the W&SD Portal comes in.
“The new portal is designed to work with existing data collection efforts to ensure we are capturing the information that will drive decision-making in the workforce development space,” said Senior Program Manager Brittany Hanks. “By entering your efforts into the portal, you’re helping drive TVA’s workforce development strategy and future investments.”
In addition to collecting the data, the team also developed a Workforce Development Dashboard to promote transparency and create an easy way to visually identify gaps, helping us better focus our attention on areas of the most need. All TVA employees and contractors can use the dashboard to find events and opportunities taking place across the region.