WITness Success with Jean Velonis

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re speaking with Jean Velonis, Senior Salesforce Admin and Women in Tech (WIT) Leader. Jean has over ten years of experience as an Admin and recently has joined the planning team for WITness Success, a conference for women, by women.

Join us to hear about Jean’s experiences transitioning from marketing into an Admin role, and how that led to a unique process of trial and error. We discuss the importance of learning to code, the difference between being on an Admin team vs. going at it solo, and Jean’s plans for the upcoming WITness Success conference.

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

Love at first login.

Jean came to the Salesforce Admin world as a marketer, originally working with leads for a finance company. As Jean puts it, “I fell in love at first login with Salesforce back in 2006.” Opportunity knocked when Jean got to move into a more technical role by taking over Salesforce reporting, opening up a whole new world of possibilities.

The difference Trailhead makes.

Jean and Mike met at Dreamforce 2009, which brought up the difference between learning Salesforce pre-Trailhead compared to learning it today. There was no certification test, everything was self-taught, and you couldn’t Google everything.

In order to troubleshoot, you had to sift through documentation and try to patch together a solution on your own. Luckily, things have come a long way since the days of the tiny help box in the corner.

Learn something new every day.

At the end of the day, being a Salesforce Admin means connecting people, not just in your business organization, but in your community to help each other out. “Where I work, we’re lucky enough to have an internal development team. I work with the agents downstairs, the sales reps upstairs, the engineers are on my floor, the product team’s there. So it’s about connecting all those people and being able to build out something really awesome.”

Jean’s goal is to learn something new every day. A new challenge for her for this year is learning to code, or at least to better understand how to copy and paste.

Jean has a lot of experience as a solo admin, including a company with over 800 users and overseas vendors. Recently she’s had the opportunity to be part of a team, saying, “it’s nice to have somebody who understands the trials and tribulations of being an Admin.”

Empower women in technology.

Jean is on the steering committee for the the WITness Success Conference, a one-day event coming soon to Chicago. “It gives ladies an opportunity to learn, network, grow, and get inspired, possibly find a mentor if that’s something that they’re looking for. We just want to be able to help all of the women in tech, in Salesforce excel at their careers and be recognized for what they do.”

If you want to find out more information about Women in Tech and WITness Success, you can visit their website, follow them on Twitter, or follow the core planning team: Jean, Kyla Longe, Jocelyn Fennewald, Melinda Smith, and Melissa Hill-Dees.

For more insights, make sure to follow Jean on Twitter (@jeanvelonis)

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