The Salesforce Admin of the Future with Courtney Buras

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Courtney Buras, a graduate of the Salesforce Girl Develop It Program (GDI).

Join us live from Midwest Dreamin’ to learn about how Courtney found her way to Salesforce, how GDI helped her learn to embrace challenges, and how she’s learning by giving back as a TA.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Courtney Buras.

A Sweet Hoodie and a Path to Salesforce

Courtney found her way to Salesforce through the Girl Develop It Program. She had been a part of GDI for a few years, and was checking MeetUp for upcoming events, and saw that they were offering a Salesforce Intro to App Building course. She had heard about Salesforce in a couple of GDI meetings and she wanted to learn more, so that’s how she ended up in a seminar with Rebe de la Paz.

Courtney attended the seminar in February 2016 and quickly realized Salesforce was for her: “I love it, I realized that it was exactly what I liked about technology— organizing data and information and creating reports out of it.” She dove into Trailhead, prodded by a contest Rebe ran to see who could get the most trailhead badges in a month. This February, when Courtney came back as a TA she found out that she had won, and her that prize was a sweet Salesforce hoodie.

Working in book publishing and writing had always been a dream for Courtney, but she got started with programming through her boyfriend, who encouraged her to get started with Ruby. “I learned it, I loved it because it was about problem solving, it was creative.” She did a Developer Boot Camp, but they were going through a transition that ultimately lead to them shutting down. The upside was that it put her in a place where she knew a lot about coding but was open to something adjacent, like Salesforce. The rest is history.

The Admin of the Future

Courtney is still chipping away at Trailhead, especially the 16 new trails that recently came out. “I was so close to being a report and dashboard specialist, and they added one more trail.” She’s looking at jobs to be a Salesforce Admin or Dev— she just had a phone interview and her skills have helped her move on to the next round.

In five years, Courtney sees herself as a Salesforce Admin at a startup in charge of their CRM, “having an input in a real company that’s growing.” She already has one idea for a good business. “I have a lot of experience working in daycare, and boy is there room for improvement.” So much of childcare is just about having a body in the room to make sure that nobody dies. Getting good people is kind of a crap shoot, and managing the erratic schedules of infants is tough. Check back in with Courtney in a couple months to find out how Daycareforce is going.

The Salesforce Community Effect

Courtney’s been to two events, Midwest Dreamin’ and a programming conference in Pittsburgh. Comparing the two, the difference is huge: “Everyone is so sociable here.” She found that everyone had tunnel vision at the programming event, “but here I entered the exhibition room and instantly Allison [Park] introduced me to all these different people and everyone’s just super happy to meet me, it’s not inconvenient at all for them.”

The community is a big separator for Salesforce, and one that we keep coming back to over and over again. Salesforce has a great partnership with Girl Develop It, doing courses all over the country. TAs have gone on to teach these seminars, including Rebe, who first TAed for Mary Scotton in Chicago, and Gillian taught one in LA. It’s an amazing ripple effect that makes the community stronger.

For more insights, make sure to follow Courtney on Twitter (@courtburas)

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