Building Skills For A Changing Economy

AI in the 1980s. The early days of OCR and intelligent character recognition. A stint with the people who helped build the internet as we know it. Then, in mid-life, a decision that many would call reckless but Tina Covielllo calls necessary: stepping off the corporate treadmill and going to art school. That pivot becomes the foundation for two very different but closely linked ventures, both rooted in one idea: people can grow, and industries can change, if we train for what’s coming next.

We talk through Progressive Pathways in Stirling and its focus on human growth through training, coaching, mentoring and organisational development. Tina shares how employability programmes work in practice across the Forth Valley, why personal development is not a “nice to have”, and how strengths-led learning can help people who are unemployed or stuck find a route into work. We also explore what it takes to scale training with technology, moving from face-to-face delivery into hybrid and on-demand learning without losing the support that makes it real.

Then we shift into the Green Skills Training Academy and the fast-moving world of renewable energy training and retrofit skills. From internal wall insulation, heat pumps and solar panels to Global Wind Organisation-aligned health and safety for onshore and offshore wind, Tina explains what’s required, why credibility matters, and how to avoid greenwashing by measuring impact. We get into EPC pressures, the shortage of domestic energy assessors, and the careful balance needed when retrofitting traditional and listed buildings, where cost, performance and planning rules collide.

If you’re building a business, changing careers, or hiring for the green transition, you’ll take away practical insight and a sharper mindset. Subscribe to the Sterling Business Podcast, share this with someone planning a pivot, and leave a review with your biggest question about green skills or entrepreneurship.

Transcript

Welcome And Studio Booking

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hi, my name is Neil Munday, and I'm your host for the Sterling Business Podcast. The podcast is brought to you from Studio King Street here in the Hall of Sterling. You can book our wonderful studio by going onto our website and making a booking that way, or sending uh an email to inquiries at studio kingstreet.com. Or you can simply pick up the phone and give Laura a call to make your uh make your booking. So, over to this week's episode of the Sterling Business Podcast.

Meet Tina And Her Two Companies

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Hi Tina, welcome to the studio.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Thank you, Neil. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

So thank you for uh agreeing to be on the Sterling Business Podcast. Uh so director, founder of Progressive Pathways and the Green Skills Trading Academy. That sounds like a lot of work.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Two very different organizations, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

And um I'm sure we'll get into uh both businesses and uh you know talk about any synergy if there is any synergy between uh between the two businesses. So before we get into specifically talking about uh what you're doing here in the Fourth Valley area in particular, uh and and I guess uh further afield than that, um, how did life start out for Tina?

From US Tech To Art School

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Um so from an education perspective and and and business perspective.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

My parents were first generation in Boston, Massachusetts. They're Italian. Um I went to private school. My parents worked very hard. They wanted us to be educated, westernized, um, and they did their best. Um I loved school. I studied business law and microeconomics in my earlier days, wasn't for me. I'm a creative. I always wanted to go to art school. That wasn't allowed. Um I then went on to work for two multinational companies, uh US companies, got to travel the world a bit, and ended up in Scotland.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

So what did you do in your career then?

SPEAKER_01 2:18

What what um in my career, technical marketing, um technical marketing, um AI in the 1980s. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Um So AI is not a new thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

AI is not a new thing. It's not new at all. Went into OCR, um, ICR, intelligent character recognition, um, early days of Siri as we know it now. I went on to work for another organization who were the developers, the founders of Ethernet. Right. And one of the first ISPs, Internet Service Providers. Um and then went on to communications. So communication being um call centers when they were trending. Moved to Ireland and managed a call center, a very large call center in Ireland and Southern Ireland, went to work for a consultancy out of London or business consultancy, and then stepped off the treadmill and went back. I went to art school. It was something I always wanted to do. And now we're talking about I'm in my mid-40s. So I did a taster course um and ended up going to university here for an for another 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

So that brings us up to roughly well, next few years or roughly about 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

All right, okay. And it was interesting because um once I graduated and I had experimented and you know did all of the art things, I thought maybe I'll go back into business. And I had lost a lot of my network. But the network that I had asked me some very pointed questions. You went to art school. What do you have to offer us? I spent the next eight months walking the oakals with that question in my head. And there's a lot about art school: creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, independence, resilience, persistence, relinquishing control. All of these are very important when it comes to entrepreneurship. And that was the turning point for me about I'm going to do my own thing.

Progressive Pathways And Human Growth

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Okay. And was that the beginning of uh Progressive Pathways? Aaron Powell That was. That was the very beginning of Progressive Pathways. Um, Progressive Pathways um is six years old now. Um we are located here in Sterling, and we are in the business of human growth. So what does that mean? Sometimes it's training, sometimes it's coaching, mentoring, or organizational development.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

And what are your demographics who do you typically sell to?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

So we do um, I would say commercially corporate, large corporate um accounts. However, I would like to think, and it is our aim as a limited company, we have social impact. It's very important to us. We do um quite a lot of employability here in Sterling and in CLACMEN and Chair, also in Falkirk, um, training young people to become the next generation of our workforce and helping them to future-proof their careers. Aaron Ross Powell So you're catching them as they're coming out of education? Not always. Um mostly um there's a gap. So they'll come out of education and they're either not employed or in education, or they're unemployed and they are registered unemployed. Either way, we're working through our local partners, through the councils, through Department of Work and Pensions to train young people who are interested in the courses that we that we devise. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

And what type of courses are they? Are they um to make themselves more marketable or are they more prescriptive around things like HR or market?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

It's quite a range. It's quite a range. I would say that um Progressive Pathos, we have upwards of 80 various courses and workshops. And the employability, um, because it's stage, you're talking about the first stage of employment, a lot of it is employment with uh skills, skills employment. So whether that's barista courses or retail courses, um, and we can talk about Green Skills separately because Green Skills also has an employability avenue as well. Um but I'll I'll tell you the difference between those two companies um in a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Okay. So where is Progressive Pathways now in its journey? Where would you say you're at? Are you diversifying further, or do you have your kind of market pretty much kind of ring-fenced, and that's what you're focused on?

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Aaron Powell Our market is ring-fenced. However, that's not to say that we're not growing. We do have some new technological advances that we're working on so that we then can offer what we offer face-to-face to a wider audience that could be anywhere in the world. So you can log on, it's on demand, um, and we're in the process of doing that. That's the next phase for us.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Aaron Powell And is most of the training and education that you deliver, is it is it online, is it in person, is it a blend? How are you typically delivering it?

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It is face-to-face, mostly for support, um, but the course itself, the content is hybrid. So it's a it's a combination of online and face-to-face. A large part of it is not skills, a large part of it is personal development, and that's what we specialize in is personal development. So we have a five-day course called Unexplored Identity, and I wouldn't recommend it just for kids, it's also for adults. It it forces us to ask the questions that we either shy away from or that are not asked of us on a day-to-day basis. We focus on strengths um to begin with, and we can um offer coaching post-course for those who want coaching during their journey. Okay.

Green Skills For Trades And Wind Safety

SPEAKER_00 8:54

So if we kind of shift gears a little bit, so I see you've diversified into the renewables world. Um what specifically is your focus there, Tina?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Aaron Powell So Green Skills Training Academy, I would describe it in two ways. There's there's energy generation and there's energy consumption. Now, from the energy generation point of view, we might, you know, you might say that's more white-collar, and the energy consumption is more blue-collar. So you're talking skills like internal wall insulation, heat source pumps, um solar panels, that sort. So renewable skills for the trades effectively. Trevor Burrus, Jr. For the trades, yes. Renewables for the trades. And the other part of that is the Global Wind Organization, where our skills um, their health and safety skills for people who are working onshore and offshore. And we're very close to opening our doors. Um it's been a long journey because of the health and safety aspect. Um it is specific and it it has to be assessed, it gets audited, and it requires uh a significant investment.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

So if you're training people how to hang off ropes, for example, and service wind turbines, it's to get the certifications, if you like, to be able to deliver the training that's effectively going to save their lives and other people's lives.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Aaron Powell That's right. And it's not just the certification in the first instance. There are those that are coming into the industry and they need to gain these certifications. But those certifications for health and safety reasons need to be maintained on a regular basis throughout their career lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Okay. So similar to a question I asked about progressive pathways, how do businesses and institutions and organizations get involved with the Skills Academy?

SPEAKER_01 10:54

So we will, our website will be up and running. Um we will have a full uh PR announcement. Um we will do that on LinkedIn, of course. We have had a year's worth of public relations, so we are always talking to others in the industry. Um very major manufacturers are aware and they're just waiting for everything to come together. And it won't be long. Um, and we do um expect significant traffic coming through. That's not the only thing. The facility itself, so we took on a property, a 5,000 square foot property, a little over a year ago. And what we are doing is we're retrofitting the whole commercial property so that it is a living, breathing renewables. It's an example of what commercial of what we do. Yes. And you know, there's a lot of talk. When you talk about green, there is a lot of what we call greenwashing. We're not going to greenwash, we're going to minimize our footprint uh and we're going to walk the walk.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Okay. So is it pr uh so you talked a little bit about the blue colour side of it. So the trades, if you like, um learning how to uh I'm assuming install things like solar panels or AV chargers or whatever it might be. Um what uh are you going to extend that to non-green trades as well?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It's not just those who are upskilling or those who are already in the industry. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: We are retraining. Um I'll give you an example: a domestic energy assessor. Domestic energy assessors for retrofit, there's a shortage as it is at the moment. And at the moment, domestically, you only need to have your EPC rating every ten years. The government's changing that to five years, which is going to widen the gap.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

We're thinking about renaming it as well, but I think they've maybe shelved that particular idea.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, they may rename it, but any retrofit that you're doing needs to be measured before it is retrofit, and it needs to be measured again. Um if an example, if you you look at, let's say, Clack Man and Share alone, maybe there's around 6,000 social properties that will need an EPC rating to start before a retrofit happens, or perhaps maybe a retrofit doesn't happen, but it still needs to happen in the first place. There is a shortage, and it is a course that anyone can access, and we are going to offer that. And we are offering it at the moment. We're talking to some local organizations and some not local organizations because while we are doing training here in Fourth Valley, we also take a selection of our courses and we're mobile. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

So it looks like the renewables sector in particular, or the green sector, is evolving very, very quickly. Lots of new innovations coming along, uh, you know, from a kind of small, you know, one-man band up into large organizations bringing new technologies to market. Will you guys get involved in any of that innovation and uh you know enable it, enablement, if you like, of bringing some of these new technologies and measures into the EPC process, for example? Do you follow the question?

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yes, the answer is

Retrofit Reality Checks And Traditional Buildings

SPEAKER_01 14:30

absolutely. Absolutely. We are always this isn't a, you know, we'll build it and that's the end of it. We are continuing to look at new technologies. I'm in London next week to look at new technologies, considering if you even take internal wall insulation, for instance, there are so many different types. And what's the right type for the right property? This is knowledge. So we're constantly gathering knowledge. And if someone says, hey, I know someone who invented this, I want to see it.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Great. Okay. So that you know that's very close to my heart. As you know, I'm a property developer. That's kind of what I do. I do this as a bit of a sideline. But um yeah, you know, traditional buildings is a is a big passion of mine, and you know, retrofitting or refurbishing retrofitting buildings like that. They need the care, the love and attention, that's expected. But there's a fine line nowadays because it's really difficult to um, you know, find the right balance between cost and and and the products that are available uh from a you know from an industry perspective. Um but it sounds like uh you're are you potentially going to have some skill sets in and around traditional buildings within your capabilities as well? Absolutely. People can be trained on how to fit out a listed building, for example, in the most uh economic and and green. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

I think you're right. There is a balance. Um I was I would I just undertook a course where they talked about different types of insulation and what was best for historical buildings. And that was my question. I said, so what's the difference between that material and that material? And he said a lot of money. However, knowing that, that is something that can be recommended, and it is the owner's choice what they want to do.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

And I guess a lot of it as well is that planning departments um they need to be educated as well, because um, yes, they don't want a um a traditional single-glazed such a case window replaced. There are technologies out there now, glazing technologies, for example, that um you you you can implement and you can put in place. But the the planning department in a lot of cases still say, no, we don't like that because it doesn't kind of you know fit the the guidelines of the you know the book, if you like. So um there'll be a lot of education required, I guess, of local authorities as well, I'm assuming. Yes, it happens. Absolutely. Great. Okay.

Growth Plans And Social Impact

SPEAKER_00 17:11

So if if we take one business at a time, um if we take progressive pathways first, what what would you say your growth objectives and plans are for the next 12 months, Tina?

SPEAKER_01 17:24

You want a number? So our growth plans. Um for for me, I don't it for me, it's not about that number. It is about movement, it's about moving forward, always moving forward. It's about having fun and making money. Um it's not a business that we will make millions at, but it is good work. Um and we are six years old. And I have to say that's more than I could have hoped for. Many businesses fail, you know, within the first five years. We are growing, we are healthy, um, our pipeline is full. And again, like looking at new technologies, we don't sit on our pipeline. We are developing that pipeline every day.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Okay, so it sounds like the big thing coming out there is social impact. Important, continues to be ever more important as you develop. Absolutely. Uh as develop that business. And what about the uh Green Skills Academy? Completely different position, not trading yet, you're very close to opening the doors. What would you say? Where would you like to be in 12 months with that business?

SPEAKER_01 18:43

That has a number. I won't reveal it here, but the number is healthy and it is achievable.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Okay.

Entrepreneurship As Adventure And Resilience

SPEAKER_00 18:52

So we can't really finish a podcast together without talking about entrepreneurship. Okay. Uh I know you're very passionate about this, Tina. Um we've known each other probably for what, 12, 18 months now? And we talk about this quite a lot. Um can you share your views on entrepreneurship um and the types of work that you typically get involved in in both capacities, I guess, in terms of your day-to-day business.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Some of it comes to us. Um but a lot of it is about going on an adventure. So for me, understanding my market, understanding the industries within that market, um it's a roadmap. It's about connecting the dots and it's about seeing the gaps. And that is what we go after are those gaps. Um, entrepreneurship is wonderful. It's scary. I have a word for it. I call it excitus. It's excitus nervous, you know, that tension being on the edge. Um you get to a certain age and you don't get that feeling very often. And when it comes, you want it to last forever. So go on an adventure. Be curious. That's what I have to say. Entrepreneurship is about it's about resilience, it's about persistence. So if resilience is, you know, you know, if you're failing and you get back up on your horse, persistence is about kicking that horse forward and not giving up. It's about fear and courage, not getting rid of the fear, but having the courage to face it, to fail, to learn from it, and to keep on going. And that's what entrepreneurship is to me. It is the most delightful, delicious job I have ever had.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Great. Very wise words, very wise words.

Advice To A Younger Self

SPEAKER_00 20:52

So I ask many of my guests this final question. Um so now older, you still look very young by the way. Uh wiser, very experienced in the world of business. You've you've done a lot in your career. Um, what would you say to your younger self if you were starting out again?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Don't do anything differently. Make the mistakes, go on an adventure, see where it takes you.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Brilliant. Tina, thank you for coming in today to talk about uh your two businesses and uh wish you all all the best with uh both of them. Really excited to see with uh specifically what happens with the Green Skills Academy uh in the coming months and years, and I'm sure it'll be as successful as everything else that you've been involved in. So thank you for coming along. Thank you for having me, Neil. More than welcome.