Tavorean Johnson felt stuck. He was working in retail and had no idea what he wanted to do next or how he saw his career unfolding.

“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do in life,” he says. “I felt like I was making no progress.”

For Johnson, that uncertainty existed alongside a precarious, inherited reality: Born in the years after Hurricane Katrina, he grew up in New Orleans, a city shaped by flooding, damaged infrastructure and uneven investment in recovery. When the 2005 storm stripped roughly 60% of New Orleans’ urban tree canopy, neighborhoods were left hotter and more vulnerable, with fewer natural systems to help manage stormwater in a city built below sea level. That is the city Johnson inherited. 

What he wasn’t expecting was that history and the need to rebuild the city’s natural defenses would eventually emerge as a path paved with opportunity for him.

Finding purpose on the ground

Searching for direction, Johnson joined Louisiana Green Corps (LAGC) in September 2025, a workforce training program created after Katrina to link environmental recovery with economic opportunity. The local nonprofit trains young adults ages 18–35 in green construction, urban forestry and stormwater management, providing paid, hands-on experience and instruction tied directly to the city’s needs. 

With New Orleans receiving more than 60 inches of rain each year and relying on aging drainage systems, managing stormwater is critical. Training residents in green infrastructure offers a cost-effective way to reduce flooding pressure while fueling a growing workforce.

Johnson spent days outside with LAGC planting trees and learning why natural systems help New Orleans build up its environmental defense against flooding and extreme heat.

“Before I joined the program, I didn’t really think about [trees] like that,” he says. “But when I joined, it was like, ‘okay, we do need more trees, we need a lot of more stuff.’”

Working across different neighborhoods throughout the city also made inequities in tree canopy harder to ignore.

“You got your parts of the city where it’s just a lot of concrete, no green,” he says. “But you got other parts where there’s green. I feel like [we] should have green space everywhere.”

That uneven access is what Tree Equity seeks to address — the belief that all communities deserve access to enough trees to support people’s health, safety and wellbeing. 

And in the process of his good work to advance Tree Equity, Johnson found his calling: He graduated from the program in December 2025 and recently accepted a full-time position as a crew leader with LAGC.

Building a more livable city

For Angel Harris, also a LAGC program participant, the lack of Tree Equity is something she notices every day.

Harris joined LAGC after her mother encouraged her to apply because she saw the program as an opportunity to explore a promising career path. Harris had an interest in real estate and thought the program would help her understand neighborhoods, infrastructure and communities better.

Through LAGC, Harris has gained hands-on experience working in public spaces across the city, including along the Lafitte Greenway, a former rail corridor that has become one of the city’s busiest parks for walking, biking and gathering. She’s helped plant trees and thought intentionally about where shade and canopy are needed most, which has sharpened her understanding of how environmental conditions shape daily life for residents.

For Harris, tree placement is as much about people as it is about infrastructure and understanding how shade, heat and access affect neighborhoods. It’s also knowledge she expects to carry forward when working with clients and communities in her future career in real estate. As the trees she’s helped plant begin to grow, Harris can already picture the difference her work will make as residents pass by her on the Greenway.

“That lady, she has a bucket hat,” Harris says. “But she’s going to no longer need a bucket hat, because she’s going to have a tree canopy over her head in a couple years.”

For Harris, that image captures the value of this work: Thoughtful investment in green space can change how people experience their neighborhoods now and in the years to come.

Training locals, building capacity

What sets LAGC apart is who is doing the work. Rather than importing solutions, the program trains people who live in New Orleans, and experience flooding and heat firsthand, to protect the city they know best.

“Innovation comes out in necessity,” says Joel Holton, program manager for LAGC. “The people that are in the trenches, will be the ones that ultimately come up with the solutions to solve those problems.”

That philosophy shapes the program’s approach: Invest in people as long-term stewards of the city’s environmental infrastructure, not temporary labor, and prepare trainees for careers that help protect New Orleans over time.

Kelle Tucker is proof of that approach. Before coming to LAGC, Tucker taught martial arts at a local dojo but was looking for a more foundational career path — one that would allow him to build long-term stability while positively impacting the city he loves. That search led him to LAGC.

“I never saw myself in the construction field,” he says. “Let alone anything like this where we’re planting so many trees and having such a huge impact on the community.”

Reflecting on his own path, Tucker sees how easily that opportunity could have passed him by. “There’s a lot of promising young people who have either not been familiarized with this kind of work or just never really had the opportunity,” he says, “kind of like I was.”

Tucker’s path reflects what LAGC is designed to do: connect people to opportunities and teach hard and soft skills, so that the work of protecting New Orleans doesn’t end when a project wraps. It continues through the people trained to carry it forward.

Making it possible

Support from partners like American Forests, through the Catalyst Fund program, helps make this work possible by providing the flexible funding and technical support that allows LAGC to expand its workforce development programming and plant a total of 400 trees along the Lafitte Greenway, strengthening canopy where it’s needed most and preparing local residents to care for it over time.

Together, LAGC and American Forests are reinforcing the idea that communities are strongest when their people are equipped to lead their own recovery.

“Louisiana Green Corps really stands out as a partner that is building dignified careers for young people where, through that work, they can also  be a part of making New Orleans a more resilient city,” says Lida Aljabar, American Forests’ senior director of the Catalyst Initiative.

Johnson is one of those people. He is someone who came into the work looking for direction and is leaving with the tools to help protect the city he calls home.

“I feel like with [LAGC] they just want to help you better yourself for the future,” he says. “So when you come into this program, you should leave a diamond. When I leave this program, I leave with more experience and more hands-on knowledge.”

Through Tree Equity, New Orleans is making a deliberate investment not just in its trees but in its people and their protection. By expanding training for green infrastructure and stormwater management jobs while restoring tree canopy in neighborhoods most impacted by flooding and heat, the city is building resilience that is rooted locally and lasts.