This is also when I got to meet Sasha Taylor, an amazing human and the mother of the Golden Hoodies! YeurDreamin' is the very first community-led event for Salesforce professionals in Benelux. Spencer, who lives in Orlando, Florida, is currently the chief operating officer of Esor Consulting Group, a Salesforce implementation partner that serves educational institutions and non-profits. Hope to see you there! Our teams work has helped equip organizations working in human services, education Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a critical part of our identity as an organization, woven into our DNA. Register here. LatinX employees fare slightly better at 5.3%. 2007: Finally finished my MBA in Information Systems and graduated with honors as well as a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, the national business honors society. August, 2023. . This is still in existence now on Chatter and Im in the process of bringing it over to Slack after hearing stuff about Chatter at TDX (for anyone that wants to join: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/trailblazer-community/groups/0F93A000000Lnx8?tab=discussion&sort=LAST_MODIFIED_DATE_DESC). Cactusforce gathers people who are experienced . If youre not mindful, it feels very transactional and fleeting, and its super obvious. Most of the time I really just didn't have any disposable income because of my situation. I went into a treatment facility for 44 days with not a lot of money in the bank and two teenagers to support. Tools for developing with Salesforce in the lightweight, extensible VS Code editor. You're currently using an unsupported browser. There are so many amazing women #Trailblazers in the #Salesforce community who are role models for others, like J. Pao-Lin Hsu. I also helped kick off the LA Architect Community Group for Rachel Park alongside Taylor Grimes https://youtu.be/kwrckdRW-HY, I also wrote about what it really means to be a CTA: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-really-means-cta-melissa-shepard, One of the things Im most proud of is a group of us launched an Architect Dreamin (we called it YeurArchitectin at the time) event in Paris alongside French Touch Dreamin, with the help and support of the amazing French Touch Organizers J-Michel Mougeolle, Fabien Taillon and Doria Hamelryk! Asterisk Loftis: It's a Salesforce-based conference for Black professionals, advocates, and allies. After a bit of research and not finding many integration tools out there, I came back and said we will build the integration framework ourselves. I also decided to launch ScaleUp Archs nonprofit in January while at Cactusforce and got it registered as a 501(c)(3) and using Salesforce NPSP through Power of Us. I clicked the link and it was an announcement that Salesforce had just acquired HeyWire. It was easier to do that when trying to grow the business and it was less overhead. Inflation is making that difficult. Ive always been mentoring, teaching, and helping. I have to thank my close friend Nadina Lisbon for pulling me in and getting me involved in the Mulesoft community. She said she picked Raleigh as the host city because of its fast-growing ecosystem. Also another CTA Warrior group member, Shoaib Iqbal, passed his board along with Krishna and our final member, Amit Jain, got a 2-section retake. I said No, not yet! In Lightning Experience, Lightning apps give your users access to sets of objects, tabs, and other items all in one convenient bundle in the navigation bar. So really it was just my first claim to fame and Benioff mentioned LiveMessage in the Dreamforce keynote. Dreamin' in Color: June 14-16, 2023. | Terms and Conditions, W-S biotech firm Plakous Therapeutics wins NC BIONEER Venture Challenge, The West wants to go further on Russian oil. After some name changes from LiveText->LiveMessage->Messaging, you would now know this functionality as Digital Engagement. I remember getting grilled by Rob Cowell on Heroku, and I was sweating bullets because I still just wasn't very experienced with it. Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States. The Important Role of Diversity in Our Core Values, Exponent Partners is Now an Amplify Sponsor. My son, who now has 4 certifications and 1 Accredited Professional certificate, is an up and coming consultant with Coastal Cloud and I couldnt be more proud! This is one reason why Salesforce announced a funding initiative last week that's sending $100,00 each to 20 nonprofits mostly led by people of colorincluding Santana's America on Tech . After doing some presentations and getting more comfortable with presenting, I was able to record my session Tackle Your Everyday Business Problems Like An Architect for Londons Calling which went virtual again during the pandemic. To all the incredible women in the #Salesforce ecosystem - I see you and you are inspiring! There wasnt much in New Hampshire, so I started looking further away such as in Maine and Massachusetts. We will work with you individually if that is the case. After living in the womens sober house I decided to start a nonprofit to help people in addiction recovery. Since 2005, Exponent Partners has been committed to our mission of helping nonprofits be radically better at driving social impact. After being absolutely devastated and feeling destroyed and knocked down, I had a long heart-to-heart with my friend Johann Furmann who I had just met during our CTA journeys. Happy #iwd2023 to all, let's keep supporting The conference is open to everyone who supports the development and growth of black Salesforce professionals and entrepreneurs. pen to all people who support the development and growth of Black Salesforce professionals and entrepreneurs. I also believe that differences are very important. Dreamin' In Color is a conference geared toward current or aspiring Black Salesforce professionals to discuss how to succeed, overcome obstacles and grow thriving careers and businesses in the Salesforce ecosystem.. Open to all people who support the development and growth of Black Salesforce professionals and entrepreneurs.. Join us June 14th - 16th 2023 in Raleigh, North Carolina I believe in raising that bar as a community. Once James passed, I pulled in another female I had met in my CTA-601, Krishna Tatta. She is also the founder of Tech Forward, a non-profit organization that partners with historically black colleges and universities to implement programs that provide early access to cloud computing careers. Theres many of us out there, including in the Salesforce ecosystem, but our past shouldnt define us or who we are today. The We are thrilled to be a sponsor of Dreamin in Color, a conference event geared towards current or aspiring Black Salesforce professionals and those who support their growth and development. Dream In Color helps healthcare organizations like digital healthcare companies, physician practices, health systems, health insurers, and pharmaceutical companies to differentiate themselves and develop new capabilities. These are not isolated, Ideal for case workers, program managers, and agency leaders, the ECM app is a customizable Salesforce solution with intake, assessment, service tracking, case records, outcomes reporting, referral tracking, and more. Thank you Elise Hanuschek for your Jackie Jones en LinkedIn: #trailblazers #salesforce #internationalwomensday #womensday #slalomproud I learned so much as a judge and developed my own strategy/style based on things I took from other peoples presentations and I know that my style became an inspiration for many others to build off of as well. I was absolutely nervous sitting next to Parker and having to do an interview with him on stage. Heres one of the most well-known videos from our group by my good friend Jitendra Zaa that was published on Apex Hours: Also had one of my mocks and Q&A published on ctagof.com (CTA gang of four): I also presented Tackle Your Everyday Business Problems Like An Architect for Salesforce User Group, Cedar Rapids, and presented for the Boston Women In Tech on a Salesforce Certification Journey panel. Salesforce is among the sponsors, as well as Raleigh-based Cloud Giants, a Salesforce consultancy firm. I studied and passed admin in May 2018 and the following week I sat for Sales Cloud and passed that as well. AL: Tiffany Spencer was doing a lot of Salesforce consulting. I look forward to what we will all accomplish in the coming years together . I was asked to tell my story about building the CTA Study Slack during the first ever Architect Keynote with Parker Harris. Custom Population Health Interfaces. Try to be better and do good in your world and your way. This presentation was starting to gain some traction. I didnt feel as though home was very safe (I had been staying with my mother) and wanted to continue to build good habits and stability in my sobriety. Enter Dreamin In Color, a two-day conference covering the ins and outs of Salesforce, one of the most popular cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platforms in the world. I found that I really enjoyed doing the certs and kept going, pretty much doing one per week for quite a while. That number wouldnt stay that low for very long! He would also go on to pass his board a couple of months later. My plan was to stay here until I had a full year of recovery. 2015: In early 2015, I decided I wanted to get back into the Salesforce world. Rather than being like, hey, lets kick it and chill and learn from each other. Every employee benefits from their employers stated core values because values help ground you. I continued to keep doing certs, acquiring about 19 new ones in the span of 8 months. I also became closer with some of the other people who received Golden Hoodies in the DF21 cohort Jenh Vo & Tony Nguyen. It was so moving to see the bonds and relationships that had formed through my slack community from people studying together. You can find me on Twitter: @lissa__x, on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lissa0977/, in my Architect Ohana Slack (invite is on this page): https://www.linkedin.com/company/architect-ohana-slack or you can email me: mshepard@lizztech.com. About a few weeks before Dreamforce I got an email from the VP of Engineering at HeyWire that just contained a link. At this point I was basically homeless and jobless with not a lot of money to my name. I also became a Trailblazer Mentor to help others that are earlier in their journeys! My brother is working with another partner CloudQnect. All of our events got cancelled and my visit to London in March and my European tour would both get put on hold. They dont want to come to the cookout. This was pretty exciting, but what was even more exciting was that we made Silver Partner status just before AND I was selected as a speaker on the Partner track! We were even doing 602 style mocks (this is the Architect Review Board Evaluation) in order to prepare for that, which is like a mini-review board in front of a CTA judge and not to be taken lightly. An app is a collection of items that work together to serve a particular function. Happy #iwd2023 to all, let's keep supporting #zoho It will include 60 sessions covering topics such as careers and well-being, leadership and entrepreneurship, Salesforce best practices and product design. Custom Claims Data Dashboard. The UK community was and still is very very special to me. 2022: In early 2022 after much thought and rumination and a vote on the slack, I changed the name of the group to Architect Ohana. Trailblazers from all over the world gather to share their insights, successes, and learn the latest in industry innovations. Renaissance Dinner and Awards, Special Opening Event LinkedIn. This is also when I first got to speak on a big stage at Dreamforce and I got to do it as a CTA. 2022 Sessions. This #DreamDesigner shares the inspiration and story behind a new conference for Black Salesforce professionals. This event is not to be missed! I had just been homebound through the covid pandemic in 2020 with my European tour getting cancelled, and then pretty much homebound in 2021 preparing for my CTA (mocks take an entire day to prepare and present and a specific setup to present virtually, so I was stuck at home most weekends to do mocks May-October 2021). Seeing this result really was one of the happiest things I have experienced in my career and even my life because I had worked so hard and fortunately was able to help a lot of others along the way to my own success. We produce applications that are designed for events, marketing, finance, and sales professionals to meet their goals without relying on Admins or becoming vendor-dependent. I love ending events with big group pictures and we really went all-out this year at TDX. We are thrilled to be a sponsor of Dreamin' in Color, a conference event geared towards current or aspiring Black Salesforce professionals and those who support their growth and development. In an interview on Trailhead, you said, Being a designer means that you question why something is the way it is. Heres a write-up I did specifically on my CTA journey: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-cta-journey-melissa-shepard. Join us from November 2 - 4, 2022, for the ultimate community event for marketers on Salesforce. Its not something to be ashamed about and I would like to help change the stigma of what an addict looks like or what they can accomplish. I also completed another full yoga teacher training this year, along with a 300 level course and some yoga retreats, so now I was 3x certified in the yoga world . I already did my first presentation for them on DevOps Best Practices, which I also presented to the Technical Architect group at Simplus along with good friend Vanessa Grant. Join Community Groups to meet peers who live in your city, work in similar roles and industries, and share your special interests. So glad I found this resource from Jodi Hrbek - so I can start looking at my schedule and . Addiction/Alcoholism is a disease that affects people like any other disease and it needs to be treated or it will likely lead to death. So leadership is just something Ive always done. I worked on developing the core software, the Salesforce connector and worked with our Salesforce customers on their integrations. I really didnt know what I was doing, but I just did it because I wanted to get more involved in the Salesforce community. Dreamin in Color sessions will be 45-minutes in length for sessions and 60 minutes for workshops. This is the first conference geared toward current or aspiring Black Salesforce professio. I dont put too much of my personal stuff out there and dont promote or advocate for myself well, but I really wanted to share all of this as there are some important aspects where I think others can identify and maybe find some inspiration through the good and the bad and the ups and the downs. What Trailblazers inspire I was presenting content that I was learning about on my CTA journey. Visit status.salesforce.com. A conference open to all people who support the development and growth of Black Salesforce professionals and entrepreneurs. MarDreamin', is a 3-day virtual community conference focused on all things marketing for Marketers on the Salesforce platform. Can't wait to to see what Zoho deliver here.. and the best thing is that is will be privacy focused and I'm sure it will work across the platform. I also plan to do more presentations at community events, Dreamforce and hopefully TrailblazerDX next year on integration & Mulesoft focused topics. Hosted by Tiffany Spencer, the incredible founder of Dreamin' in Color, this virtual summit will bring together Salesforce specialists to help you unlock or unblock the potential of Salesforce DevOps in your own teams. Also, if anyone knows of more content of mine out there thats not listed on this page please let me know! I was ready to leave the Salesforce ecosystem and abandon the CTA altogether feeling that it just wasnt meant for me. I wrote webservices in .NET to integrate Saleslogix CRM (which I got some exposure to at the integration company since we had a connector) with the MDM, so deviated from Salesforce a bit during this year but still stayed in the area of CRM. Dreamin' In Color is a conference geared toward . Scratch Orgs Before we move ahead CI/CD with Scratch orgs and SFDX is quite powerful, yet simple! Looking back, its hard to believe that it took me 10 years to finally attend after initially being told No when I wanted to go in 2006. Its one of the best places for tech professionals to work and live, she said. Happy International Women's Day! I found a few others that had also failed their boards and said we are all going to pass this time together and we wont stop until we do. I got to know a bit more of the European Salesforce community, and met Vicki Moritz-Henry, another important person on my journey who would later on volunteer to help me with one of my initiatives, ScaleUp Archs. I got to spend more time with Gemma, Matt and the rest of the UK crew that I got to know while at London World Tour and met more such as Louise Locke, Amanda Beard-Nielson and so many others! Not many companies were using it at the time but I wanted to keep working with it. And its all of these microaggressions, like about my hair. Melissa is a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect, 32x Salesforce certified with 22 years of experience in Technology and 17 years in Salesforce, https://trailhead.salesforce.com/trailblazer-community/groups/0F93A000000Lnx8?tab=discussion&sort=LAST_MODIFIED_DATE_DESC, https://www.womenintechrepublic.co/salesforceqa-melissa-shepard/, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-cta-journey-melissa-shepard, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-really-means-cta-melissa-shepard, https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/yeurarchitectin/, https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSelvN8aHPv2M4_gB5MQ3bsag7T71ReWzD-rdLv3zByEobXWqQ/viewform?usp=sharing, https://secure.givelively.org/donate/scaleup-archs-inc, https://www.linkedin.com/company/scaleup-archs, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/guidance-cta-journey-melissa-shepard/, https://sessionize.com/architectdreamin2023/, https://www.linkedin.com/company/architect-ohana-slack, YeurArchitectin Organizer and CTA mock review board judge in-person, Dream Ole Seville, Spain March 31st 2023, Albania Dreamin Tirana, Albania April 29th 2023. 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