How a Working Mom Helps Others Redefine Their Careers

I’m on a mission. 

A mission to empower 200 parents from across the globe to change their careers by 2020. And above all, to help returning-to-work parents to find success. To shout out about the Salesforce career opportunities out there and to inspire other mothers to make a change — as I did. 

I have kids. I know the challenges of childcare costs and flexible working needs. Eight years ago I realized I needed a change. To change my career and create the work-life balance I needed. 

I wanted to have it all — without sacrificing my career.

I thought, “Why can’t I?”

And so I did. I found Salesforce and never looked back. Working with Salesforce has helped me to achieve the life I wanted. I traveled the world on sabbatical, I moved to the seaside, I work remotely part of the week, I have raised two children, and supported my family through terminal illness.

All because I took the leap and made the change.

Salesforcing all the way!

Challenging the status quo

So many women don’t know about Salesforce or realize the incredible career options it can open up. This has to change.

In the U.S., more than 29% of mothers are not working. And this problem is happening the world over. In the UK, 2.6 million moms aren’t working, 7 out of 10 moms can’t find flexible work, and 55% of moms are forced to take junior positions.

Women are also considerably under-represented in IT. Stats show, women make up less than 20% of U.S. tech jobs, even though they make up more than half of the U.S. workforce. There’s huge potential to change this. The opportunity is there. Especially as nearly half of Salesforce Administrators are women.

With the Salesforce ecosystem vastly growing, at speed, there’s a desperate need to build and train up the talent pool to service all of the jobs opportunities being created.

Driving change

I wanted to be part of the change. I’ve advised on employment programs for 11 years as an economic development consultant. For six years, I ran a social enterprise supporting young people into employment and training. And I trained as a Salesforce Admin and Consultant, completing three Salesforce courses.

In 2012, I became a Salesforce Consultant and went on to establish a NonProfit Salesforce Consultancy organization, Economic Change CIC. Today, we have a team of 13 professionals supporting over 200 nonprofits in their implementation and adoption of Salesforce.

And I’m very proud of our work.

Inspiring women in tech

But I wanted to do more to push the needle of gender equality in tech.

In 2016, I created the Salesforce Supermums workforce development program. Although started in England (hence the spelling!), this is a global six-month virtual program providing training, mentoring, work experience, and job placement support via a recruitment service.

Supermums offers courses with 40 days of learning including 6 volunteer days on a charity Salesforce project, working alongside an experienced consultant. 40 hours of virtual mentoring support is offered by volunteers.

Trailhead, Salesforce’s gamified learning platform, is an integral part of the program with more than 50 badges earned as part of the course. Trailhead is a huge hit with the parents, many of whom go on to become Trailhead Rangers, earning at least 100 badges and 50,000 points.

Supermums’ super success

• Sam who had a background in beauty and was a stay-at-home mother for 13 years. She retrained as a Salesforce Admin, securing a job at her first interview with Power to Change, a nonprofit customer. Sam has worked there 2-3 days a week for the past year. She has helped the organization to relaunch Salesforce, transition to Lightning, and boost user adoption by 80%.
• Gillian who raised her 3 children after a 10-year career at IBM. She completed the Supermums course in 2017, securing a role at ISV Partner, Asperato. Gillian is now 2-years in and has been promoted to a Head of Customer Success role.
• Bruna who has one child and previously worked in social media/marketing products. After skilling-up, she went through a grueling seven-stage interview process securing a full-time role as Marketing Cloud Account Executive for Salesforce Barcelona. Bruna is a proud Trailhead Ranger who loves her job and her team.

Helping all these people is reward enough, but I was delighted when we won the Sage Foundation Equality and Diversity Award. Additionally, we were a top-five finalist for the European Digital Skills Award for Women and Children and finalists in the Women in IT Diversity Initiative Award.

Supermums of the future

I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved in such a short space of time. But we want to do so much more. To reach disadvantaged parents, we’re launching scholarship schemes working with charitable partners.

The team of staff, trainees and volunteers continue to grow, and we’re now a force to be reckoned with. We’re hiring, building our international volunteer base, and talking to organizations all over the world to help scale up the work experience and placement opportunities.