{"id":20026,"date":"2020-11-10T09:28:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T17:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=20026"},"modified":"2020-11-11T13:22:29","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T21:22:29","slug":"how-salesforce-is-helping-veterans-find-a-future-in-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/news\/stories\/how-salesforce-is-helping-veterans-find-a-future-in-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"How Salesforce is Helping Veterans Find a Future in Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on November 20, 2019, and is posted here in observance of Veterans Day, November 11, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re on duty, thousands of miles from home, under constant threat of enemy attack. You signed up for this, making personal sacrifices to serve your country. It\u2019s an honor. But in those rare moments of downtime, you dream of life back home \u2014 a career, a family, a future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Navy veteran Sheldon Simmons saw that future life in the pages of magazines he\u2019d occasionally receive while aboard ship. He read articles about promising careers and saw that most of them related to technology. \u201cIn the Navy, I was an aircraft fueler, working aboard aircraft carriers, and we didn\u2019t do anything tech-wise. Seeing that everything in the future was going to deal with technology, I thought, when I leave the military, I\u2019m going to pursue a career in tech.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After being discharged from the Navy, Simmons immediately enrolled in a community college in his hometown of Austin, Texas, to study computer programming. It was a promising start; however, life intervened. With a wife and son but no certainty of a job, tensions in his marriage led to a breakup that halted Simmons in his tracks. He stopped studying and took any job he could get. \u201cI did whatever I could to make money, but I was struggling, trying to take care of my son and pay for an apartment. Still I was telling myself, \u2018You have to get into tech. You have to go back to school and learn something with computers because this nine-dollars-an-hour stuff is not going to cut it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Determined not to lose sight of that goal, Simmons re-enrolled in community college. Things began looking up after he nailed his final presentation in a class on Java programming, based on a website he\u2019d created for his mother’s daycare business. That\u2019s when a counselor who\u2019d attended the presentation asked him if he knew anything about Salesforce and Merivis \u2014 a question that would change his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Ma\u2019am, I don\u2019t want to sell anything,\u2019 and she explained Salesforce isn\u2019t like that \u2014 it\u2019s tech. She knew I was a vet and told me how Merivis helped vets learn Salesforce. She said she was going to introduce me to this man named Hector Perez.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preparing veterans for their next mission<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Perez is co-founder of Merivis<\/a>, a non-profit, volunteer-driven veterans\u2019 service organization. It focuses exclusively on preparing veterans for a career in Salesforce technology, through training, mentorship, and job-readiness guidance.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Hector Perez, co-founder of Mervis<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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