Can climate change resiliency and green jobs transform the low-income communities in East and South Knoxville? Prior to the pandemic, the city unemployment rate was already 3.5 times higher than the Knox County rate, and the black poverty rate of 42% was highest of all Southern cities with 100,000+ populations. Such dire baseline conditions, combined with disproportionately higher COVID hospitalization and death rates, are proving catastrophic for our most impoverished and vulnerable neighborhoods. Stanley Johnson is a native of Black River, Jamaica. His family emigrated to the United States when he was very young, and they seasonally traveled from Florida to New York picking fruit. Stan earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1995 from historically black Knoxville College.