Hi @Jeremy_Conn
that’s really cool! Thanks for your question!
I recently saw this newly announced specialization: AI for Good Specialization - DeepLearning.AI, which seems to be a great fit for your plans. At the moment joining the waitlist is possible.
I believe practice is key - so I would suggest to get your hands dirty rather sooner than later. On this note, many fellow learners recommended this Python specialization which I would suggest to check out!
What worked really well for fellow learners and also me was to check on interesting concepts and academic papers w/ published code, e.g. on https://paperswithcode.com/ as well as playing around with algorithms and creating or adapting relevant models, see also some GitHub repos which contribute to the personal area of interest.
Best regards
Christian