An Interview for with Celeste Frye, Founder & CEO, Public Works Partners and Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, President & CEO, The Center by Lendistry
As clean energy infrastructure is being built, what’s still missing is the workforce ready to install, maintain, and modernize it. Closing that gap isn’t a side issue for the clean energy transition; it’s the difference between failure and success.
Introduction
Celeste Frye is the founder and CEO of Public Works Partners, a women-owned planning and consulting firm that helps mission-driven organizations strengthen their operations and increase their impact.
Public Works Partners draws on a diverse team of experts spanning policy, operations, economic development, human services, and government administration to deliver urban planning and consulting services that help organizations design more equitable systems, stronger communities, and more livable spaces.
Celeste’s philosophy is rooted in systems thinking. Celeste was named to Crain’s New York’s 2018 Notable Women in Accounting and Consulting list, City & State’s 2019 Above and Beyond, City & State’s 2021 Community Engagement Power 50, and in 2023, she was named as a Leading Nonprofit Consultant by City & State. She earned her BA with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Regional Planning from Cornell University.
Tunua Thrash-Ntuk is a community development professional with 20+ years of experience leading economic inclusion initiatives and billion-dollar public programs to build stronger, more prosperous communities.
As president and CEO of The Center by Lendistry, Tunua leads strategies to ensure underserved small businesses have access to the resources, education, and capital needed to succeed. She has been recognized with numerous honors, including the COMTO Transportation Trailblazer Award, the NAACP’s Trailblazing Woman Who Opens Doors Award, Bisnow’s Women of Distinction Award, and the President’s Award from the Greater Los Angeles African American Chamber of Commerce.
She serves on the boards of the Greenlining Institute and Move LA. She earned her Master’s Degree in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from UC Berkeley.
The Center by Lendistry developed the Inclusive Contractor’s Playbook in partnership with Public Works Partners, drawing on work with GRID Alternatives. The Playbook is a practical framework that helps clean energy companies identify, assess, finance, and support the contractors they need to grow.
Let’s start with the big picture: why is contractor capacity turning out to be a major bottleneck for clean energy growth right now?
CELESTE: Given how much energy the U.S. consumes, we will continue to see significant investment in energy infrastructure, including clean energy. Contractors with clean energy experience are therefore at a premium. There is also a broader shortage of electricians and other licensed professionals, as a lot of experienced professionals are aging out of the field.
In recent conversations, local utilities here in New York have said building the pipeline of trained electricians is an urgent need. As companies compete for experienced and qualified contractors, it pays to invest in increasing the capacity of the contractors you already have.
The Center by Lendistry’s work is centered on closing the wealth gap. How does contractor capacity building for clean energy projects connect to that broader mission?
TUNUA: The clean energy transition represents an enormous economic opportunity. For us, the question is who gets to participate in that opportunity and build wealth from it. Small and locally owned contractors are doing the work that turns clean energy investment into real projects. When those businesses are positioned to compete for larger contracts and grow, they can create jobs, build generational wealth, and strengthen the communities where they operate. We want to make sure that as new industries and investments grow, small businesses have a meaningful opportunity to grow with them.
How did this partnership between Public Works Partners, The Center by Lendistry, and GRID Alternatives come together?
CELESTE: We were excited to partner with The Center by Lendistry, whose core mission is supporting small businesses, particularly historically underrepresented and women-owned businesses. GRID Alternatives was a natural fit because of its strong social mission and its work delivering solar and storage projects in low-income and disadvantaged communities.
Over time, GRID has built an organic network of contractors, primarily in California. Public Works Partners worked directly with GRID on a procurement plan to support the company’s growth nationally, including an expansion of the contractor network. That engagement surfaced many of the questions that ultimately shaped the Playbook. The Center identified the broader opportunity, GRID provided the real-world use case, and we brought our expertise in procurement, organizational strategy, and small-business support.
GRID Alternatives is held up as a case study of this model in action, going from a regional California program to a national expansion strategy. What made GRID a compelling example, and what can other organizations take from their experience?
TUNUA: What GRID understood is that you can’t scale your projects without also thinking about whether your contractor network can scale with you.
As GRID prepared to expand nationally, they looked beyond simply recruiting more contractors. They wanted to understand what it would take to build and maintain a network that could support a growing volume of work. Working with Public Works Partners, we were able to take what we learned through that engagement and develop a framework that other organizations could adapt to their own contractor networks.
For other organizations, the lesson is that your contractor network isn’t separate from your growth strategy. It’s a critical part of it.
How might other clean energy companies use the Playbook for their own workforce challenges?
CELESTE: Most organizations are already thinking about these questions, even if they are doing so informally. The Playbook gives them a framework they can compare against their existing practices to identify potential blind spots or missing steps. It is not a one-size-fits-all model, and it does not ask organizations to discard processes that are already working.
For an organization entering a new market or beginning this work, the Playbook can serve as a step-by-step starting point. For a more experienced organization, it can function as a scorecard, reflection tool, and conversation starter. GRID’s experience gives the framework a real-world foundation, while the Playbook remains flexible enough for other organizations to adapt it to their own markets, goals, and partners.
What’s the biggest misconception clean energy companies have about their contractor pipeline before they go through this kind of assessment?
TUNUA: I think the biggest misconception is that building a contractor pipeline is primarily a recruitment challenge. Finding qualified contractors is only the first step.
A company can have a long list of capable contractors and still find that those businesses aren’t positioned to absorb significantly more work. That’s where assessment becomes important. You need to understand not just who can do the work today, but what it will take for those businesses to grow alongside your project pipeline. That shifts the conversation from, “Do we have enough contractors?” to, “Do our contractors have the capacity to deliver where we’re headed?”
Public Works Partners contributed research and planning expertise to the development of the Playbook. What did that research process actually look like, who did you talk to, and what surprised you?
CELESTE: Our research and planning work for the Playbook grew out of our tailored work with GRID, our broader stakeholder conversations, and our experience in procurement and small-business support. We reviewed the federal and state funding sources that contribute to the capital stack for clean energy infrastructure, along with the local contracting and procurement requirements attached to that funding. We also spoke with stakeholders across the ecosystem, including utilities, contractors, and clean energy developers. One important takeaway was that individual resources may already exist to help contractors, but organizations still need to identify, connect, and cultivate the right support ecosystem.
Where do you see this Playbook being most useful in the next decade?
TUNUA: I see applications well beyond clean energy. Over the next decade, communities will be making major investments in infrastructure, electrification, rebuilding after natural disasters, and other projects that depend on strong local and regional contractor networks.
We’re seeing that firsthand in Los Angeles as communities rebuild from the 2025 wildfires. There is an enormous amount of work ahead, and an opportunity to make sure small, local contractors are positioned to compete for work happening in their own communities.
At The Center, we’re also working on the contractor side of that equation through our Contractors Accelerator for Climate Resilience, which helps small contractors nationwide strengthen their businesses and prepare to compete for climate resilience and clean energy projects.
Ultimately, we need both: organizations that are intentional about building strong contractor networks and contractors that have the capacity to take on the work.
The framework breaks down into four steps: identify, assess, finance, support. Was that structure something that emerged organically, or did you have a hypothesis going in?
CELESTE: We began with a hypothesis informed by our procurement work with other organizations, although the framework initially included more than four steps. As the work progressed, we refined those ideas into four distinct areas: identify, assess, finance, and support.
Identifying contractors and assessing their needs are often treated as one step, but they are different processes. Identifying means determining which contractors are a strong fit, while assessing means understanding what those contractors need to build their capacity.
Financing emerged as a separate step because access to capital is often one of the biggest barriers small businesses face when taking on larger contracts. A business accepting a million-dollar contract, for example, may need to cover payroll, materials, staffing, and other expenses before receiving payment. This creates a catch-22: businesses often need financing to complete larger contracts, but access to better financing may depend on having successfully completed larger contracts already. The Center’s expertise in small-business technical assistance and access to capital was particularly important here, because identifying a financing gap is only useful if contractors can then be connected to resources that can help address it.
The final step, support, encompasses broader capacity and skill building. This may include internal training, accounting and business assistance, operational support, and connections to specialized resources. Our team’s experience working with the New York City Department of Small Business Services, a hub for this type of business support, also informed our approach to this part of the framework.
How does this contractor-capacity problem show up differently in the clean energy sector versus other infrastructure or urban planning work you’ve done?
CELESTE: Helping small businesses build the capacity to work with larger contractors and compete for bigger contracts is a challenge across industries. The underlying premise of the playbook is that this represents a win-win opportunity for both clean energy developers and contractors.
The particular workforce skills gaps vary by sector. In clean energy, the challenge is often a pipeline issue, with skilled workers aging out of the industry faster than they are being replaced. Clean energy also has an additional complication because funding can drive a boom-and-bust cycle. At the same time, clean energy solutions are becoming more competitive with one another, even as the need for more electricity on the grid continues to grow.
Where is the clean energy industry finding contractor support, and why?
CELESTE: Contractor support comes from a range of sources across the ecosystem. For developers, identifying contractors is largely a matching process. Business chambers, local governments, and developer sourcing teams can all help connect companies with qualified contractors. However, there is not yet a perfect marketplace for making those connections, and there is significant room to strengthen that infrastructure. State utilities are also increasingly communicating their contractor needs directly.
Financing requires a different network of support. Organizations such as The Center by Lendistry can help small businesses become capital-ready and connect to financing, while banks and community development financial institutions can provide access to capital. Broader technical assistance, such as improving accounting systems or training staff, may come from small-business support organizations, local development corporations, and universities.
This is where our work often comes in. We help organizations navigate the available resources, map the support landscape, and build coalitions because that ecosystem does not develop on its own. For example, we recently worked with the Southwest Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation in Sunset Park on green economy workforce research, and we also helped write the NYC Green Economy Action Plan.
If a reader takes away just one action item from this conversation, what should it be?
CELESTE: We want to see more clean energy infrastructure up and running, with its economic benefits distributed equitably across businesses and communities. Achieving that requires federal and state funders, utilities, clean energy developers, contractors, and other stakeholders to work together as part of a functioning ecosystem.
This is not simply about determining who gets a slice of the pie. It is about making more pie. That requires a framework for collaboration, and the Playbook can be adapted to address different needs across the value chain. This is not a sprint; it is a long-term investment that ultimately benefits funders, utilities, developers, contractors, and communities.
TUNUA: Assess your contractor network before capacity becomes a problem. If you know where your organization is headed, start asking now whether your contractors are positioned to grow with you. Identify the gaps early and determine which ones you can address directly and where you need partners. Contractor capacity shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should be part of how you plan for growth and successful project delivery.
Where can people go to get started — the Playbook, the case study, both?
CELESTE: Start on the Main Street Goes Green website by reading the Playbook. See which principles resonate most with your team, and then reference the study to understand how this has been implemented by GRID Alternatives.
TUNUA: I’d recommend both. The Inclusive Contractor’s Playbook lays out a practical four-step approach that organizations can adapt to their own contractor networks. The GRID Alternatives case study shows what that approach looks like in practice and how contractor capacity building became part of GRID’s broader growth strategy.
Contractors interested in strengthening their businesses and preparing to compete for climate resilience and clean energy opportunities can register for The Center’s Contractors Accelerator for Climate Resilience.