Over the last year I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work with Salesforce Academic Alliance team. They first came to Phoenix posting in the Phoenix User Group for anyone interested in sharing their story on a customer panel. I was happy to share my story of becoming a Salesforce Admin. It also happened to be a panel in front of educators at University of Phoenix. This is where my story began. I was a young adult, working full time, raising my son and working my way through a bachelor program at University of Phoenix. It was refreshing to share how far I’ve come since first starting out with Salesforce and inspire others to jump in feet first!
Academic Alliance started boot camps at University of Phoenix. The first session was the beta program for Business Specialist. This session was all about the business user and helping them be an expert in Salesforce. These users learned the basics of navigation in Salesforce, chatter, account management, email, marketing needs and most important reports and dashboards.
The next workshop was for Admin 201. This is the base Salesforce certification. It was wonderful to see some many students and business users interested in learning more about Salesforce. This certification covers the basics of administration of Salesforce. Many learners found the workshop helpful, especially learners that had already had experience on the platform.
The final workshop that was held was for DEV402 or more widely known as the App Builder certification. It was wonderful to see admins and developers in the same room learning about Salesforce; the collaboration between the groups of learners. Continuing the path of learning data modeling, deploying custom applications and customizing application for mobile gives students and learners the opportunity to expand their knowledge of Salesforce.
I continued my journey with the Academic Alliance team by attending a 5 week session for ADM201 Pro Pack. The Pro Pack is a virtual 30 day learning program that walks learners through skills to prepare them for the administrator certification. Shadowing the instructor over the weeks helped me to add skills to my backpack. Learning key points that the students needed help with and seeing how they improved every week was thrilling. I even got to teach one of the weeks the next round of the session!
I was so excited when the Salesforce team asked me to join in review sessions for students that had attended prior workshops. Being able to share my expertise, narrative and examples of where I had implemented Salesforce was special. Students had the opportunity to ask questions to sections they needed help with and get tips on Trailhead and certification testing.
While at Dreamforce the Academic Alliance team brought students from all over the country to learn more about Salesforce and the career path. I was able to join the students in the Admin Meadow to share in person my path as an admin over the years. It was an amazing group of diverse students. My first group was full of ladies in different programs getting ready to graduate in the spring. I shared with them some advise I was giving at 20 when starting my path in college and Salesforce. “If it scares you that means you should do it!” Starting college with so much already going on in my life was scary… Then deciding to take on a new learning opportunity like Salesforce when no one else wanted to learn it made me nervous. It was one of the best decisions I could have made for my career.
Salesforce also announced the Educator Program. This gave community #Trailblazers an opportunity to give back like I had been doing all year. We enjoyed breakfast learning and sharing our stories with other members of the community to encourage them to join as educators. I had been so excited about the educator program and Business Specialist badge that was now required; I completed all the requirements prior to Dreamforce. Now I’m officially teaching in the December session along with another community member just joining the program.
If you are interested in learning Salesforce or becoming an educator you can find more information here:
Trailhead for Students Educator Application
Salesforce Fundamentals Trailhead Bootcamp – December 2017
#SalesforcePrincess 
Jean, the Trailhead for Students Team (Academic Alliance) is so grateful not only for your engagement with our program but your passion to give back, teach our youth, and for your persistence and innovation to help make this program what it is today! This is just the beginning and we’re grateful you’ve been with us the entire journey! We cannot wait to see where community members like you help take the new Educator Program in the next year – looking forward to seeing you in class again and hearing from students how much they enjoy what they learn from you! Big thanks for being a part of our #Ohana in a very special way!
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