Welcome to the fourth of my Salesforce Career Success Journey series. This series is focused on learning about, sharing our career journey and hopefully encouraging others to pursue or continue their career on the Salesforce.com platform. It is a pleasure to have Kieren Jameson on today’s post! She is one of the RAD (Radical Apex Developers) founders and I am all too excited to be part of this learning group this year. Thanks for giving so much back to the Salesforce community!
If you would like to share your Salesforce Career Success journey, submit here.
Name: Kieren Jameson
Company: ETR and Rad Women
Job Title: Digital Solutions Manager (for ETR) | Co-Founder and Leader (for RAD Women)
Which Salesforce certifications do you have?
Force.com Developer
How many Trailhead badges do you currently have?
32
[Annie: Keep on trailing!]
Describe what you do at your company.
ETR is a health and education non-profit. We have a pretty traditional sales catalog of health-education materials (pamphlets, posters, curriculum etc), and we have a lot of grant-funded programs that we run.
I am a mixture of IT Manager and Digital Product Manager. I manage people, networks, and enterprise IT systems (including Sales Cloud, Pardot and Desk.com). I build websites and databases (whenever possible in Sales Cloud). I also help people plan, budget and implement technology within both agency initiatives and the many grant funded projects within ETR.
Give us a snapshot of how you got your salesforce career started and/or how your career has developed.
I have worked in the technology field for over 20 years, and have been building websites and databases for most of that time. I started as a Digital Librarian and fell in love with data and how to structure it to get the information you need to solve problems.
I’ve always worked within the non-profit sector, with the majority of my work being for health and education non-profits. It’s a world near and dear to my heart.
In 2012 the org I work for (ETR) applied for and were granted 10 licenses to Salesforce through the Salesforce.org grant program. I was blown away with what we could do with this system. Work that would take me months to build as a custom application could be done in days. My eye grew big at the possibilities. I have loved the ease and connectivity of the Salesforce Platform.
I also fell in love with the community. There is nothing like the Salesforce community. Not to say there isn’t great people outside the Salesforce world, but I feel like I found my home within it.
I also wanted to give back, so with others I started RAD Women, a remote learning coding school for advanced women Salesforce admins. We are about to embark on our second cohort of learners and I’m loving it.
[Annie: I share your same passion for healthcare and health education!]
What coding language did you start off with? Or how did coding come about in your work?
HTML, CSS, CFML, JavaScript/jQuery. I learned on the job and then lots of self directed learning.
What advice would you give to someone who is developing their career on salesforce?
Join the community, join one or more in-person user groups if you can. Become active on one or more of the community forums (Power of Us Hub, Success Community, Developer Community). Get on twitter — there are sooo many Salesforce peeps on twitter. I have met some of my favorite people there.
Do you have any tips about leaping to a manager position?
Be helpful and super organized and help people not just in your group, but in other groups so that others in the agency know that you’re good at what you do. You have to get out of your box so that others can see you.
Are you a leader or member of a user group?
I am a member of Girlforce (which I think is not an official user group) and Salesforce Women in Tech (both online and the local San Francisco group) and the San Francisco Salesforce Developer User group (this is for both programmatic and point/click developers).
[Annie: I say we join forces for GirlForce to become a recognized user group!]
Please name 1 person from the Salesforce community that you’d like to thank for supporting you on your journey.
It has to be Chris Duarte who is the Managing Editor of Trailhead. Even before she joined that team (which does amazing work as a group), she was an advocate for my learning. I don’t think I’m unique here, in that she advocates for all learners. But she has given me much individual encouragement, whether it was learning more, or writing blog posts, or just being part of the community. I love that she has invited me to be part of various Salesforce initiatives. She makes me feel like a partner not a customer and I really appreciate that. She has pushed me to move beyond my comfort zone and reach for more. So a big thank you from me to Chris.
[Annie: #BeLikeChris]
What’s the one Success Community group you can’t live without?
Salesforce Women in Tech
Follow Kieren on:
Twitter: @kierenjameson
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/KierenJameson
Websites: http://womencodeheroes.com/
AnnieForce 