The Whole-Person Approach

If you’re in the home performance industry, you’ve heard of the whole-house approach—but have you heard of the whole-person approach? Well, the Massachusetts-based company Vision Life Consulting Services LLC has created their business doing just that.

“We take a holistic approach to people,” says Keanna Green, CEO of Vison Life. Vision Life is a professional and personal development company that marries building science skill-building with other life-skills training in an effort to help people enter the industry and improve on a personal level. Keanna has been delivering development and skills-based services for over two decades, serving the city of Boston and beyond. Now, Vision Life has an online platform available no matter where you live.

“Our approach takes into account all aspects of balance and what it means to be balanced. There is no up without down, left without right. Understanding that balance is necessary in everything we do,” says Keanna.

Meet Keanna Green

Keanna’s company specializes in delivering and curating varied forms of social services and mental health access points. Their first product was a life management workbook series titled “Life’s Reckoning.” The series contains collective exercises, self-assessments, tools, and resources to help people problem solve, manage money, gain self-awareness, and manage stress. Expressed through a Caribbean cultural perspective, the series of workbooks is hailed as life-changing for its readers. One reader said the book “shifted [her] perspective and shed light on a new way of thinking.”

And that’s exactly what Keanna intended it to do. “Many people don’t realize how powerful their mental health is to the rest of their life,” says Keanna. “People need to focus on self-awareness and critical thinking—and that includes in their work.” Keanna holds degrees in both social and political systems and in business administration and her passion is in helping people find ways to balance their hard and soft skills.

Meet Natalie Green

Another member of the Vision Life team is Natalie Green. Natalie’s title is Business Fillings & Startup Consultant, but her main focus is managing training programs for the organization. Natalie’s education is in environmental studies and business management, which comes in handy as grows Vision Life training and opportunities.

Vision Life offers training options and bundles specifically for those interested in building performance, including one that prepares individuals for the Building Performance Institute (BPI) Building Science Principles (BSP) Certificate of Knowledge.

“All of our training began through a local community college, but now comes directly to Vision Life,” says Natalie. Vision Life Educational Services is now an online platform available to anyone, anywhere. That is possible because Vision Life has become revered as an administrator for skills-based certificate and personal development trainings. Organizations including PowerCorps Boston look to Vision Life to support their varied cohorts with these courses.

PowerCorpsBOS is a 10-month Green Industry Workforce Development Program. It provides young adults with training, career readiness support, and connections to employers in the efficiency industry. As a “learn and earn” program, PowerCorpsBOS pays members to participate in hands-on training that prepares them for living-wage careers.

“We really want people to not just retain information. We want them to retain a job,” says Natalie. “Everyone in the energy efficiency industry should ask themselves: How can I help the environment in the future and myself today?” 

Finding Balance in Training

In addition to PowerCorpsBOS building science programs, Vision Life currently offers multiple workforce development and certificate pathway programs, including a weatherization certification in partnership with ICF, Mass Save, and Suffolk University.

Vision Life Educational Services continues to expound on their holistic online course offerings. Using courses that are usually condensed, the organization broadens the scope, adding in professional development topics with hard skills that’ll prepare individuals for a job in energy efficiency.

Their students come to them with varied levels of education and experience, but all are welcome. “We train on a scale so that our content is inclusive to all types of learners,” says Keanna. “We offer various activities for engagement with education. We meet them where they are and get them where they want to be.”

Right now, Vision Life is offering four educational bundles—one of which is the BPI Bundle. The BPI Bundle prepares students for the BSP Certificate exam and includes:

• Weekly live sessions,
• Community forum for peer collaboration,
• Hands-on activities, including energy modeling exercises, diagnostic testing simulations, best practice case studies, a final project, and a certification readiness assessment.

“We walked away from this course understanding where opportunities lie and how to advocate better for ourselves,” said one participant, Melvin Harrison. “[Vision Life] provided us with such a thorough course and was very patient with us as well.”

“[The Vision Life] approach was amazing,” said another participant, Jaden Barber. “[It’s] the way [they] had real life conversations with us. [They] kept us in check and made sure we [weren’t] half-stepping.”

What’s on the Horizon

While it may sound like they’re already doing a lot, Vision Life has no intention of slowing down. “We’d like to grow in scale and service a lot more people,” says Keanna. Their online training platform is available for anyone to take, but they’re also open to additional training partnerships with industry organizations.

And, along with providing important workforce training, these two women want more than anything for people to understand that a person’s life and a person’s work shouldn’t be worked on independently. “We’ve done the work in holistic health and in maintaining a productive workforce. These two things go together and we can provide the industry support for organizations to do this, too,” says Keanna. “We’ve broken down traditional educational walls and are forging a pathway forward.”