Inspiring Young Women at Salesforce Australia

By: Davinder Mann, Programs Manager – Salesforce.org ANZ

Earlier this month, Salesforce in Australia opened its doors to 5 work experience students coming from the Women in Engineering & IT (WIEIT) program at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS).

As part of our Workforce Development programs at Salesforce.org we aim to help young people from all backgrounds, cultures and education levels build a pathway to a 21st century career. This particular program was run in the hope that these 5 talented women would see a multitude of opportunities where they could take their career and how to build a plan of action to get them there.

“If these women represent the future of Australia, the future is looking bright indeed.” – Kathy Chi, Senior Director – Legal at Salesforce

Over the course of the week, students got to participate in a wide range of activities, like building out a V2MOM and also got to meet employees from across Salesforce to hear about their jobs, getting an understanding of what it’s like working at a technology company. The group also got introduced to our Ohana, our innovations, and our way of learning, through Trailhead.

Following the week, we heard from some of the participants about their experience:

Linda Tinyow

“What surprised me during the week at Salesforce was to find this family culture was ingrained throughout the company. The ‘Ohana’ culture assisted me through improving my interpersonal skills through interactions with the Salesforce team members. All the stories that were shared with us has positively impacted my perception of the employees, products, and company culture. From the week being at Salesforce I would be using Trailhead and links provided by Salesforce individuals to expand my knowledge in my free time. The tool that I would be using the most in the future would be the V2MOM to map and guide me through my personal and career goals.”

Celina Aston

“Throughout this week, I’ve learnt a multitude of information whilst not all of it aligns with my V2MOM, learning is still a core belief that my values are built upon, as it fuels knowledge, experiences and analysis. More specifically however, I have learnt about data and the data analytics that always linger in the background of almost all the processes within the company that have been presented to us throughout the week. This is my vision, my goal if you like – the integration of data analytics and how it could be connected to further innovations, in particular, finance. Through one employee, Pam Loreto (Senior Financial Analyst – Finance & Strategy), I have gained insight into the financial operations and learnt that technical knowledge is not always necessarily required in order to operate analytics technology due to user friendly platforms like Wave Analytics.

Ayesham Tariq

“One session that had me bursting out of my seat with excitement was Solutions Engineering with Dan Bognar (SVP, Solution Engineering), and I’m going to be honest – I was completely disinterested at first. But after about 5 minutes, I took a look at what was on the whiteboard and I thought – ‘wait…this is exactly what I’ve been learning for the last 3 years. This is every assignment and conceptual project I’ve done’. So I ask Dan ‘…isn’t this really similar to a business analyst role’ and he replies with ‘yes so it really is a BA role, the key difference being that we work pre-sales and it involves quite a bit of a sales aspect’. I think from that point on I barely gave him a second to breathe before asking question after question after question.”

Kishwer Farhad

“Meeting with Eileen O’Mara (SVP, Commercial Business Unit) was an amazing learning experience for me and what I have learnt from her is that it is very important for a person to know whether he/she gains strengths from others at workplace or not. Being an extrovert person,  it made me realize that I gain strengths from people around me. Also, from the professional experience of Edweena Stratton (VP, Employee Success APAC) I have learnt the importance of networking as she shared that most of her jobs she has got through networking. She also made me realize the importance of equality at workplace. I also got to know the 8 core principles of Salesforce which was beautifully described by Phil Cleary (Senior Director, Productivity). At last I can say that each of the meetings with different people in Salesforce during this whole week has not only made me learn different things but also helped me to expand my professional network.”

JingYing Cheah

“Six weeks ago was STUVAC which if you are unaware, is one week before examinations. Instead of doing revision, I was at Salesforce for a panel discussion event covering very interesting topics on equality, work life balance and what companies should do moving ahead in this fast changing technology world. Needless to say, I do not regret taking the time out of my study for this event at all. Six weeks later, I was back at Salesforce for a five days work experience. We were lucky to meet the teams and to be submerged in the Ohana culture, fantastic snack-coffee-tea bar. Never underestimate the power of free food.  On a more serious note, this experience has taught me to be proactive as I approach the next phase life.”

Learn more about our Workforce Development programs here >>