Building More Than Buildings — Turner Construction's Herbert Brown on Workforce, Community, and What's Rising in Nashville

What does it take to build a city — not just its skyline, but its workforce? On episode 31 of At Scale, the tnAchieves podcast, hosts Graham Thomas and Tyler Ford sit down with Herbert Brown, Community and Citizen Director at Turner Construction, for a wide-ranging conversation about economic development, K–12 engagement, and what it really means to invest in a community. Herbert's journey — from Memphis to the University of Tennessee to Tennessee State, through the Higher Education Commission and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce — reads like a map of the state's most important workforce conversations. And now, as part of the team building the new Nissan Stadium, he's helping write the next chapter.

At the center of that chapter is the Titans Construction Training Camp, or TK2 — a five-week paid training program developed through a joint venture between Turner Construction, a|com|hunt, ICF Builders, and Polk and Associates under the Tennessee Builders Alliance. Now in its eleventh cohort, TK2 gives individuals with no prior construction experience the chance to earn real industry credentials — including OSHA 30 certification, NCCER, and flagger certification — while connecting directly with trade partners who are actively hiring. It's the kind of program that doesn't just open a door; it builds the hallway. Herbert puts it plainly: the goal is to help people step into a career, not just a job.

But Herbert's vision for community connection goes well beyond job training. When groundbreaking began on the new Nissan Stadium, Turner and the Titans partnered with Metro Nashville Public Schools and PENCIL to hold an art competition for elementary school students — whose work was then featured on the stadium fencing for the entire city to see. It's a small detail with an outsized impact. "Those students felt connected to the project," Herbert said. "That's exactly what was happening." That same philosophy runs through Turner's partnerships with Glencliff High School, Cambridge High School's construction and architecture academy, and their participation in tnAchieves' Job Shadow Expo — where over one hundred Middle Tennessee students got a firsthand look at careers in construction last summer.

As Nashville continues to grow — and as Turner moves into the Bridgestone Arena renovation and projects across the state — the message Herbert brings to students is consistent: embrace the technology, build your soft skills, and get connected early. Organizations like tnAchieves, he says, exist precisely to create those bridges between the classroom and the career. The new Nissan Stadium opens in fall 2027, complete with a dedicated community room for nonprofits and civic organizations — proof that the most lasting structures are the ones built with the community in mind.