At the beginning of 2024, SCoRE launched an External Advisory Council, composed of key partners with deep expertise in sustainability, innovation, and community engagement. Throughout 2024, we are profiling our EAC members in our newsletter. This month, we are delighted to share an excerpt from an interview that SCoRE's senior director, Jennifer Hirsch conducted earlier this month with EAC member Pamela Fann, founder and CEO of Integrated Solutions. The interview focused on Pam's long career, which has spanned multiple sectors and brough together experience and expertise from a number of diverse fields, all of which relate to SCoRE's focus on creating sustainable communities. The interview opened with the first question below - and Pam took it from there! (Note that Pam's response has been edited and condensed for short and easy reading.)
Can you walk me through your career progression from way back, up to today?
I truly feel like I'm living my purpose right now. I did not get here by my design; I never would have put myself in doing this work, owning my own business. I've been in the energy sector almost 7 years now. Before that, I worked for The Coca-Cola Company for 22 years. I started at the call center answering the 1-800-GET-COKE number when people had problems with their equipment service. "Thank you for calling Coca-Cola, this is Pam, how can I help you?" Then I did various jobs in project and account management. My last position was Executive Assistant to the VP of Global Public Affairs and Communications, which was my dream thing to do.
I sat on a Diversity Board for 7years. I never though this was work that I wanted to do. But around 2016, we held a Town Hall at The Coca-Cola Company after there were a series of killings and shootings of unarmed Black men. This one was Terrance Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma - the state where I'm from. Black people in particular at the company were having a really difficult time talking through it. We had this Town Hall meeting with top leaders from the company. I was very shy with public speaking, but I felt compelled that day to get up and talk. I get to the podium, people have been crying. I just said, if everyone in this room who's ever been profiled or stopped by the police or followed in stores - please just stand up. And every Black person in the room stood up, from our senior leaders to our VPs to presidents of groups. And there was this audible gasp. "Huhhh!!" I wanted them to see and view from a different lens. I explained that while what they saw on TV was maybe warranted, if they think that those people were perhaps "in the wrong place" or "they should have complied" those of us standing knew that we were one degree of separation from that being us, our sons, our father, or our brothers.
The reason I could see if an explain it through that lens is how I grew up. I grew up in Owasso, OK, and we were one of the first Black families to integrate the town. My white friends used to tell me and my family all the time, you all aren't like other Black people. I knew there was this disassociated thinking. There was a point in my life where I also had that same disassociated thinking. But then my family's home was burned down by a white supremacist group in 1988, and that's when I cam to the association that I'm really not like y'all, my white friends. That profound experience of extreme racism shifted my thinking too. I knew for sure in that moment that I and my family were exactly like other Black people. So while that was never my path - in that moment when I stood up and decided to speak - that became a part of my path. I told the story of my family's home being burned down, and that was the first time I had ever spoken it out loud. Many friends who had known me said, we had no idea. I call it extreme racism. When you're a victim of any kind of either extreme racism or anything, it's somewhat shameful and it kind of marks you as that person that thing happened to. And I never wanted it to be a part of my story. But I wanted people to understand - racism is alive and well, y'all. So that was my point in telling them that story.
From that point on, people started asking me to talk about it - and I was not comfortable talking about diversity or race. I personally was comfortable in other spaces because that's how I grew up, but I was very uncomfortable talking about race because it brought up all those feelings for me. As a family, we never talked about it; but that prompted me to talk to my family about how it changed the full trajectory of each of our lives. I got more comfortable talking and speaking about it. So it gave me this other lens that has benefited me in this work. You can't judge an entire race of people by the act of a few. I was already supporting diversity work. Then I just dug in deeper and did even more work supporting it.
What led you to leave The Coca-Cola Company and then start working in the energy sector, for the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA)?
Eventually I got laid off from The Coca-Cola Company when I was 44. That's why this is all so serendipitous because I loved that company and would have stayed there forever. I was like "Miss Coca-Cola" - people literally called me that. So when I was laid off, I had to figure out - who was I now? When I worked there, I had been a serial volunteer; I spent most of my weekends volunteering on behalf of the company at different projects, whether it was volunteering on a park beautification project, picking up trash in Vine City, working with the King Family. I didn't know if I was up to running the corporate rat race again and began exploring nonprofit work. So I took a job at SEEA as the Membership Manager.
When I joined SEEA, I went to multiple conferences across the county where I was the only Black person or one of a few and one of only a few women. So I started growing up my knowledge about the energy industry and thinking about how I could shift the dynamic I was seeing. I have a marketing degree with a certification in human resource management, and in 2019 I got certified as a Diversity Professional and Trainer (CDP, CDT). I immediately starting working with SEEA in building cultural competency frameworks for diversity. And then other organizations started asking me for assistance - in hiring diverse talent, how do we improve our cultural competency internally, how do we look at our supplier diversity and outreach externally. And I started working on helping minority-owned businesses get visibility; I knew of 5 - 6 companies in this industry only getting sub-and not prime contracts. I was bringing them to events, connecting them to utilities to have discussions about supplier diversity, to see how we would bridge that gap and get them more opportunities.
Eventually, I became SEEA's first Director of Membership and Diversity Integration. I asked SEEA to make my title, Director of Membership and Diversity Integration instead of belonging, which is what they had suggested. Because I've never felt like I belonged. I left Oklahoma intentionally to get away and moved to Atlanta to attend Clark Atlanta University. I wanted to go to an all-Black college, but I also then didn't feel accepted. A lot of that has shaped my thoughts about diversity. I've never belonged anywhere; I didn't belong with the white folks, I didn't belong with the Black folks. Integration has always been my word. That's why I named my company Integrated Solutions: it's about bringing people in all their uniqueness together and not making them belong to one thing or another.
About a year and a half into my new position, Ahmaud Arbery was shot in Brunswick and then George Floyd happened. And then the work just got big. So in 2021, I started my own consulting company to do this work, and in 2022, I left SEEA to do it full-time. My company, Integrated Solutions, started as just a diversity consulting company. But because of my energy background, I was asked to do work that connected diversity and energy. I became a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) adviser for DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and a lead author on the Energy Equity Project Report out of Unversity of Michigan and gave talks about equity and energy. I find myself now sitting in the sweet spot of being able to work in industry and being able to connect to those on the ground. At Integrated Solutions, we do project installation, workforce development, and civic engagement. It's what I've been called to do.
Two years ago, I was in a conversation with my son, and I realized - this is what a purposeful life looks like. Everything in my career has led me to this. At the end of the day, it's really to help people, in a way that it also then professionally helps me. But it never would've happened had I not stood up that day at the Coca-Cola Company and spoke my truth and talked about why diversity was such an issue.
What do you find important about collaborating with higher education partners in your work?
I began working with higher education through the RCE Greater Atlanta network while I was at SEEA. I became involved in assisting them with their equitable practices and then that transformed into my supporting additional programs. It was through there that I met you and Ruthie Yow. I always liked what you stood for both personally and professionally, and how you were wanting to incorporate equity into your programs. If we reach young people and students at an early age and get them to understand how they should be considering equity within all that they do, it makes for better development of young professionals in this world that will actually be doing the work.
What made you say YES to our invitation to join the SCoRE EAC and what are you most excited about working on with us moving forward?
I consider myself a lifelong learner and there is still so much for me to learn about this industry and new technologies. Georgia Tech and SCoRE EAC seem to have the finger on the pulse of what is happening in this space and how to bridge it with their students and with communities. I was excited to learn that equity would be a part of this practice and am more than happy to support your efforts.