Episode 1: Gemma Emmett Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. Her journey to a Salesforce Solution & Technical Architect over the last ten years, and the inspiration behind "Ladies be Architects".

[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]

Interviewer: So joining me today is Gemma Emmett who is a bit of a Salesforce legend and, correct me Gemma, if I'm wrong, but an MVP now as well?

Gemma Emmett: Yes. Yeah. Recently minted.

Interviewer: Minted? Nice.

Gemma Emmett: That's the term people use.

Lee D: Oh, right. I didn't realise. Okay. Thanks for joining me on the first one of these. So let's be kind, go gentle on me. Well, I want to just have a chat about the 10 or 11 years I think now, that you've been working Salesforce and the journey you've been on, which I think is pretty crazy having had a look at your background in terms of the kind of companies you've worked for and how you started and where you are now. So that we can share that with people and people that are out there that are thinking of maybe getting into Salesforce, how to do it and follow someone like yourself, really. So remind me, is it 11 years?

Gemma Emmett: It is 11 years, and I think actually I remember you guys were one of the first firms of recruiters that I actually got in touch with just as I was finishing off being an administrator and moving into consultancy. So we've been speaking constantly over that 10 year period, and it's just incredible to see how that market has grown for the recruiter firms as well. It's just been incredible.

Lee D: Your story is unique, yet not. There are other people on similar trajectories. If you think 11 years ago, correct me if I'm wrong, but your first exposure to Salesforce, was that at Dun & Bradstreet or did you do it before that?

Gemma Emmett: It was a Dun & Bradstreet. Yeah. It's quite funny actually because my background was always data analysis, so I was working on spreadsheets and pulling reports, and I made a mutual decision with a previous employer to leave and look for a job, and they said, "You're going to be in sales ops, and we're early adopters of this thing called Salesforce." So I'm like, oh great another place I can pull reports from. Great. And then I started to understand fairly quickly that I wouldn't have to be pulling reports and putting them all into spreadsheets, that it was all online and that my job was so much more than pulling data and analysing results now, it was more supporting people with the tool and the role evolved because I was pulling data and helping to keep people, helping to keep the sales pipeline as accurate as it could be by supporting people. Then for me, I realised I really enjoyed doing that, and I really enjoyed looking after Salesforce, and I really liked the idea that it was online and that you didn't have to install it on any computers or anything like that. That's how it started. And as I started to learn it, Dun & Bradstreet were prepared to invest in me going on courses and doing the certifications, which were quite new back then, I think this is 2008.

Lee D: They were called something completely different then, weren't they? I mean I think the administrator has always been the administrator, but the way that that's evolved has been crazy over the 11 years.

Gemma Emmett: Yeah. And now we're looking at 25 plus certifications, back then we were probably looking at about five, just the strengths of this platform has actually enabled people like myself and my colleagues who've been doing this 10 years to grow our careers in the same way, not just for experience and videos, because back then we didn't have Trailhead. We learnt through bitter experience, and we learnt through delivering training ourselves to people. Back then we'd have to train people yourselves. We learnt from documentation and videos, and now you can actually get hands-on with it on Trailhead. So a very different way of building your career on...