Lunch, Unpacked: What Two Transportation Leaders Shared about Electric Vehicles
Electric vehicles are only one piece of the shift away from fossil fuels. The energy and transportation infrastructure behind them—and the people trained to build and repair it—are just as core to getting there. That was the throughline at this month's Lunch, Unpacked, where LaSheita Sayer and Bobbi Solis, each working a different piece of that puzzle—workforce and infrastructure—shared what's really happening on the ground. This was the conversation at the Alliance Center’s first Lunch, Unpacked event!
Training the people who power the grid
LaSheita Sayer, Founder and Executive Director of Women Who Charge, opened with a question a lot of us think we already know the answer to: don't we all want a more diverse, female-friendly energy workforce? Most people say yes.
The harder part, LaSheita said, is the gap between that intention and the capital it takes to train the specialized technicians the energy industry actually needs. Wanting women in the workforce and funding the pipeline that builds it are two separate problems, and her organization is working to close that distance.
LaSheita’s hot take was hard to disagree with: "Workforce development isn't a charity expense; it's the critical investment required to power our future." Training technicians is infrastructure work, on par with any other capital investment our region makes.
Keeping the chargers running
Bobbi Solis, Operations Director at Colorado CarShare, picked up the EV thread from the infrastructure side. Demand for EVs is climbing, which is good news, she said. But it comes with a harder question: what does it actually take to keep public charging reliable when shared infrastructure spans CarShare vehicles, neighborhood cars, and drive-by charging?
Bobbi was candid about the friction: vandalism, outages, blocked chargers, and charger programming issues all force constant operational pivots to keep vehicles charged and members on the move.
Her team's response has been to get specific rather than wait for someone else to solve it. Colorado CarShare is expanding dedicated EV parking with stakeholders, adding covered parking with chargers, negotiating lower parking costs with cities, and posting streetside charging where they can. They're also expanding the vehicle mix nearby—hybrid and gas options alongside EVs—and building better technology for member support. Her takeaway: "We are committed to getting this right—for our valued Members, our neighborhoods, and our planet."
Hot Take Takeaways
Workforce and infrastructure are usually discussed as separate issues. LaSheita and Bobbi showed how tightly they're linked: the technicians who keep chargers running have to be trained somewhere, and the chargers those technicians maintain only work if the people using them stay engaged. Both speakers pointed to the same answer—participation. Join, ride, train, build. The future of transportation in our region is being built by the people in the room, and we can all engage with our legislators, landlords, and companies to ensure there’s funding to build out the infrastructure we need.
Catch the next Lunch, Unpacked!
Check out our Events Calendar to RSVP for our next Lunch, Unpacked event.
