From the Inside Out
How New Orleans trains its next line of defense
By Ciana Williams
Student Stories:
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.
Through Louisiana Green Corps' (LAGC) workforce development program, Tavorean Johnson found his calling, earning a full-time crew leader position following his December 2025 graduation from the program.
Photo Credit: Casey Joiner / American Forests