Growing up reading comic books
I always read about people that were inventing things.
This is Shuri volume one, right?
There was this whole other universe where,
anything was possible with science, magic, transformation.
I had just the whole fascination
with being able to change your reality.
These characters I was reading about,
they were traveling through space in time.
They were learning different things.
I know that a lot of them were fictional,
but the part about inventing things
and learning different technologies
and creating that was very much a reality.
That is something that could be achieved.
I Know you don't want to start with me.
(daughter laughing)(gentle music)
We are at one of my very first jobs.
Island country club is where I worked my serving
and bartending job for about a dozen years.
I saw a lot of people that I worked with over the years
And I thought, well, I know there's more out there.
I know that this isn't it.
And this was our little break area.
This area is very significant.
This break area here, I had a really rough shift here.
And this is the area I walked
down to make the phone call to my husband.
She called and said, "I'm ready to quit.
Will we be all okay if I go back to school?"
And I said, "absolutely, we will be,
whatever you take we'll support you."
I left here without the guarantee of success.
When you take a chance on yourself
there's always that possibility that you won't make it.
I had an idea that I wanted to go back
to school for technology.
I arrived at going to IV tech but I ultimately,
settled on their software development program.
The first day I walked in,
there was nobody that looked like me and I thought,
okay, maybe I've made a mistake.
Maybe this isn't a good idea.
Hey, oh my gosh.
Long time.
It's great to see you.
You too.
Marquita was a good student.
She was topnotch in the class.
She reminded me of myself just less than paying attention.
whatever I'm saying and doing she seemed to be absorbing it.
Like I felt I used to do.
I was learning something totally new
totally side of my comfort zone.
this totally different version of myself.
The most difficult part of her going back to school
was when our daughter was diagnosed with a tumor.
We were driving to Starbucks.
She was driving and she almost ran off the road.
I said, oh God, pull over.
And so we went into the emergency department
and that's when they saw that she had a massive brain tumor.
We didn't think about anything past that point.
And, the doctor came in and when they come in,
and they sit down, it's going to be bad news.(crying)
They referred us to a really reputable surgeon.
I withdrew her from school and I was seconds away
from clicking withdrawal for myself.
And she comes in and she says, "mom, no, you can't.
You're so close, you got to finish."
They were all so proud of me but especially her
because she stopped me from quitting.
Cause she's just so strong.
(bell ringing)(people cheering)(gentle music)
My mom is like my superhero.
She's been my best friend since 95.
I've seen the ups and the downs in her life.
I just like her dedication and her drive and everything
I graduated and I had this new credential
but really had only known the service industry yet.
I didn't know where my place was in tech quite yet.
I found out that Salesforce would be opening up
a new office here in our biggest building downtown.
So I googled, how do you learn Salesforce?
And that's when I found out about the Salesforce community.
Indie women in tech group and got started
on the trailhead platform and had never seen anything
like that before it was gamified.
That's when I built my first Salesforce app.
Oh yeah, art inspiration.
I met Marquita at a training I was doing.
I was a volunteer teaching intro
to app building with Salesforce.
going into the a trailblazer community there.
It was just very diverse.
It was a lot of different types of people there.
We really just get to know each other.
And we talk about Salesforce.
We talk about the struggles that we face
during our job day to day.
I thought, oh my gosh, I can do this.
I've found something that's cool.
I was contacted by one of my former professors.
And he said that Salesforce was launching
this work initiative program called Pathfinder.
And then that I should come check it out,
that he had nominated me.
that you are not just a good a student or intelligent now
but are you going to work for this and make it work?
It gives so many people an opportunity to change their life
It was using Trailhead for 12 weeks
but it was structured with a goal in mind.
And the end goal was to get certified.
I took it that first time
and I did not pass it but I studied hard
regrouped and passed it the second time.
When it said, congratulations, I just froze.
When she passed that exam
she received an extra level of confidence
that she can get to the next level.
Yeah, I was going to say like that for me.
We're just going to trace it, go with this purple.
It's like a metallic that takes a long time.
There were a lot of rejection letters
A lot of interviews with no follow ups.
Did I do the right thing?
I thought this was going to really change things.
It just so happened that Lisa was on the pannel
of this user group, and she had said that her company
was looking for Salesforce admins.
Going through programs like Pathfinder
to better themselves and to learn more,
it's those lifelong learners that I want to hire.
Somebody who wants to learn, wants to understand,
Well, she had encouraged people to apply.
And so I did, I applied and got hired on at Liberty mutual.
When I got that call, let me tell you,
I screamed like screamed to the point where my children
upstairs were saying, " what's wrong?
No, no, not a spider, yeah.
What do you think?
There I go.
Marquita is a Salesforce administrator slash
business analyst at Liberty.
She's a rockstar hashtag awesome admin.
She really helps make the user experience better
for the Salesforce instance that she supports.
I really enjoy when someone comes to ask me
for a Salesforce question, because it's like, oh
I know this and I can help somebody else know it.
When you bring someone else up with you,
and there's just this collective hunger for knowledge.
And when you learn it, you just want to multiply it.
Even though this has been more than a four year journey
for me, I feel like I'm just getting started
constantly working towards moving up in my company.
I'm just so thankful to have a great person
to look up to and to aspire, to be like.
I don't feel like I'll ever have this set mindset.
I just always try to keep a growth mindset
Oh, I would, captain America he joined the army as a kid.
He was a teenager and they gave him the super soldier serum.
He never got to finish school.
If I were cap, I'd go back and finish school.
I love that.(laughing)
That's great.
That's exactly why we go out fishing
Well, you guys really bringing it out.
