Aug 29 2024 16 mins 7
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Kate Lessard, Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce.
Join us as we chat get to know the newest member of the Admin Evangelist team and her journey through the Salesforce ecosystem.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Kate Lessard.
Giving back to the Salesforce community
Kate actually got her master’s in museum studies, so how did she get involved in Salesforce? “I started at a nonprofit in Denver, Colorado, and my first day on the job they asked me if I had ever heard of Salesforce,” she says, “and I said no and they said, ‘that’s okay but you’re in charge of it now!”
One thing that really helped Kate, back when she was an accidental admin, was finding a mentor in the Salesforce community. That’s why she’s been so focused on giving back through programs like Super Moms, WITness Success, and Forcelandia. And now, she’s the newest member of the Admin Evangelist team.
Working behind the scenes
Kate takes the stage at tons of events but she also does work behind the scenes. For Forcelandia, she’s the Communications Lead, where she coordinates with speakers and makes sure they have all the information they need to be successful.
The two main lessons she’s learned from this work are that no question is a dumb question and that you balance how you communicate information. For the first one, you don’t want to be the person who shows up in the wrong place when people are depending on you. For the latter, it’s important to realize that some people want one big communication with all of the facts and others prefer it broken down into smaller snippets.
Kate is great
Kate is excited to join the Admin Evangelist team and share how awesome it is to be a Salesforce Admin. “I’m really drawn to this because you get to still be technical and know how to do all the things,” she says, “but you also get to share the excitement behind them.”
We think Kate is great, and if you want to meet her she’ll be presenting two sessions at Dreamforce this year. The first will be on why admins should learn dev fundamentals, and the other will be a security breakout session. Make sure to stop by and say hello!
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Full show transcript
Josh Birk:
Welcome, Salesforce admins. I'm Josh Birk, your guest host for this week. This week we're going to sit down with our brand new Lead Admin Evangelist, Kate Lessard, and get to know her a little bit better. So let's go straight to the tape.
All right. Today on the show we welcome Kate Lessard to talk about, well, mostly Kate Lessard, and the things that you're doing and some of the conferences you're going to be going to. So Kate, welcome to the show.
Kate Lessard:
Thank you. Excited to be here and to talk about myself.
Josh Birk:
It's all of our favorite topics. All right, so going into your earlier years, the first thing that I see in your early years is that you studied abroad in France. How did that come about?
Kate Lessard:
Oh, my gosh, I was so lucky to be able to do that, and my study abroad sister is still one of my very best friends. I just went back and saw her this year. She just had a baby, so that was really cool. Yeah, I studied French in high school and just really loved the language and learning about France. And had the opportunity to go with my high school for a really short spring break-style program, and then went back in college.
Josh Birk:
I got it. I did like that underneath you listed some of your activities that included gastronomy. Isn't that just a fancy word for saying French food?
Kate Lessard:
Oh, yeah. We had a whole class that I got credit for in college on gastronomy, which was wine tasting and learning how to cook desserts and cheese tasting.
Josh Birk:
I had to take PE.
Kate Lessard:
I know it was the best class.
Josh Birk:
Not fair. Okay. And then you went on to study art and eventually a master's in museum studies. Where did that interest come from, and what's it like studying museum studies?
Kate Lessard:
Yeah, I've always loved art, and that was my favorite subject in school growing up, and especially when I went to France and got to see all these incredible artworks at some of their wonderful museums, decided that I really loved art, loved art history, and wanted to find a career in that. And museum study seemed like a cool way to be able to do that, to just be able to experience some of the best artworks in the world and be able to share that with others. So that was where I went into that kind of study path.
Josh Birk:
Nice, nice. Well, and to put a cap on that, giving you an overview for the, and I'm going to try to get this right, the Pre-Raphaelite female muse in Juliet Margaret Cameron's, Idols of the King photographs. Did I get any of that pronounced correctly?
Kate Lessard:
That was pretty close.
Josh Birk:
Okay.
Kate Lessard:
That was pretty good, yes. My master's thesis, the longest paper I will ever write in my life, hopefully. It was really fun to dive into some Pre-Raphaelite photography. It was one of the first actual times that photography was used as artwork and not just capturing the world around us. So that was really cool.
Josh Birk:
That's really cool. That's very, very cool. Now, how did you move from French and art and photography into software and computer?
Kate Lessard:
Oh, gosh, what a journey. So, with that museum studies and art background, I was working for some arts and culture organizations, nonprofits, and I started at a nonprofit in Denver, Colorado. And my first day on the job, they asked me if I had ever heard of Salesforce, and I said, "No." And they said, "That's okay, but you're in charge of it now." So accidental admin is my entry point.
Josh Birk:
Gotcha. Nice, nice. And I mean, I assume you can talk about it, but your first gig was something about counterterrorism?
Kate Lessard:
Yes, it was the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab. They had an exhibit space, so that's why I was drawn to it initially, because there was this museum space that still exists in Denver that you can go into and learn about counterterrorism. But the main thing that we did was programs in training up event staff and volunteers about how they could recognize signs of terrorism. And if you see something, say something.
Josh Birk:
Interesting. So in the age of 9/11, because museums, public spaces, all of this kind of stuff... It's fascinating how our public safety protocol has gotten above flight learning CPR.
Kate Lessard:
Absolutely. Yeah. Your volunteer job is more in-depth these days.
Josh Birk:
Right. Now, before we get into your current job, let's talk a little bit about your vast experience in volunteering. We'll start with: How did you get involved with Trailblazer mentoring?
Kate Lessard:
Oh, gosh. When I was an accidental admin, I was so lucky to find a mentor in the community, and as I got more advanced in my career and was able to be like, "Oh, my gosh, I have kind of crossed this threshold of needing someone to mentor me," which I guess we always need someone to mentor us, but I felt like I was in a space where I could actually start to give back to others, and that's when I joined the mentorship program.
Josh Birk:
Nice. And we had Heather Black on the DevPod talking about Supermums. Tell me a little bit about that program.
Kate Lessard:
Supermums is such a cool organization. They are based in the UK, and they actually have a Salesforce class that their students go through, and they have these modules that they work through. And the mentors are kind of like, I almost think of it as like a teaching assistant, because you're not just there to provide career guidance. You are also there to help them develop their Salesforce skills and help them through the training classes.
Josh Birk:
Nice. Nice. And I know there are similar programs, and they find that it's amazing how much that increases the success of not only gaining the knowledge but knowing what to do when you walk into an office and you have to have an interview for it.
Kate Lessard:
Absolutely. And being able to have a portfolio of work that you can show someone like, "Hey, I've actually done this; I've built this." You can see it live.
Josh Birk:
Now you've had a lot of experiences, both on the stage but also behind the scenes for events. You've been a community group leader; you've worked with WITness Success; you've worked with one of my favorites, Forcelandia. First of all, what brought you into that side? Because that is very different from mentoring; it's very different from educational; it's very organizational program management, working with people. What attracted you to that kind of volunteering?
Kate Lessard:
Yeah, very different, but also a lot of the same group of people. And so, when I was mentoring and becoming involved in the community, I met several people that were involved with the Denver Women in Technology group as well as the Denver Admin group when I was living out in Colorado. And they kind of folded me into WITness Success and were really welcoming and started off just volunteering with the registration table, really enjoying the conference itself, and wanted to just be part of making it happen. It was such a good experience for me, both networking wise and learning wise.
Josh Birk:
Got it. And speaking of learning, what are some lessons you've learned from those experiences?
Kate Lessard:
Oh, my goodness. Well, with Forcelandia, I am the communications lead, which means that I am in charge of basically tracking down speakers, communicating with them, making sure that they have all of the information that they need to be successful. And the things that I have learned that I use in just my life project management philosophy is that no question is a dumb question. If you have a question, you should always ask it because you don't want to be the one that doesn't have the answer and isn't where you're supposed to be, especially at a conference when people are depending on you. And also to balance communication, figuring out how people respond. Do they want one big communication with all the facts? Is it helpful to break it down into littler snippets? Just figuring out the way that different people work and how they absorb information has been something that's been really helpful.
Josh Birk:
Love it. Now talking about your roles, moving on to the stage, and also the skills that you were just talking about. Now you're only about two weeks into the gig, but first of all, welcome to the team.
Kate Lessard:
Thank you. Happy to be here.
Josh Birk:
What is your new job, and what's the one sentence or when people ask you, "Wait, what does an evangelist do?" What do you tell them?
Kate Lessard:
My new job is Lead Admin Evangelist at Salesforce, and evangelists get to be out in the community sharing how awesome it is to be a Salesforce admin and the very cool things that we get to do. So I'm really drawn to this because you get to still be technical and have to understand and know how to do the things, but you also get to share the excitement behind them and be able to share that with others and get them excited and doing all of the really awesome things that you can do as a Salesforce admin.
Josh Birk:
Love it. Is there any early content that you're working on that you can share with us right now?
Kate Lessard:
Oh, absolutely. I will be at Dreamforce this year presenting two sessions and also kind of helping some other speakers get ready for their sessions on the admin track.
Josh Birk:
So if you're on the admin track, you might be hearing from Kate pretty soon. Now let's go ahead and dive into those two sessions. Now, let's start with the one I'm actually a little familiar with because you presented a version of it at Forcelandia and you talk about jumping into the shoes of a developer and then some of the lessons you learned from that. What enticed you to try to jump into the shoes as a developer?
Kate Lessard:
A few years ago, I was at a point where I was feeling really good in my admin career and didn't know what the next step was. And I feel like at the time, you were an admin or you were a developer, there was not the amazing options that we have right now to take our career in. They just weren't as widely publicized. And so I was like, "Oh, I guess a developer is my next step." And so I went through RAD Women, which was an incredible training program. I learned probably more in those few weeks than I've learned in much of my life and got to the end of it and realized that the number one lesson I learned was that I didn't want to be a developer. And that there's no such thing as being just an admin, which I think was the big lesson, that you can take skills, and you can continue to learn from different subject areas, and they can just make you a better admin. And that was a really big lesson.
Josh Birk:
Yeah, because that was my follow-up question. So how long did the developer's life stay for you?
Kate Lessard:
Oh, yeah, that was shattered pretty quickly. Still very dev curious; I am very fascinated by the things that developers do, and now I have the language to be able to speak and understand, which was one of those really important things to learn.
Josh Birk:
And I think it's something that's going to become more common because the era you're talking about is the one before we started using phrases like admineloper, which I have been on the record of saying is both my favorite word and also my least favorite word. It's my favorite word because it's like it proves the need. We wouldn't throw that part together if we didn't have to describe people who had to carry both roles, but also, as an English major, it just makes my ears ring a little bit every time I say it. But I also feel like admins are being confronted with... As flow expands into being more parity, have more feature parity with APEX. What I've heard a lot is it's not the exercises that programmers go to when it comes to streaming logic together, but understanding what a variable is and what are these nouns that we're working with. Gives a good framework for using a lot of the more advanced features in flow.
Kate Lessard:
Absolutely. And it just kind of lifts up the curtain. One of my developer friends always likes to say, it drives her crazy when people say that "Dev work is magic," because it's not magic.
Josh Birk:
It's not magic.
Kate Lessard:
It's logic.
Josh Birk:
Actually, one of my old school jokes was when people found out that I'd gone from English and psychology and I got into computers, and they're like, "Yeah, but you were never very good at math." And I'm like, "Of course I'm not good at math; that's why I have a computer. I'm good at logic; I've got a computer that can do all the math for me. I don't need that."
Kate Lessard:
That is great. I love it.
Josh Birk:
Now tell me a little bit about your second session.
Kate Lessard:
Second session is going to be a breakout on security.
Josh Birk:
Oh.
Kate Lessard:
So we're still working out what exactly that's going to look like. So this is just a teaser, of course, but going to talk about building a security culture at your organization.
Josh Birk:
Oh, I like that. I like that. Don't worry. You still have about 30 days, so plenty of time.
Kate Lessard:
Thank goodness.
Josh Birk:
To get some slides together. And then I will be seeing you at Mile High Dreamin'. Tell me a little bit about the talk that you're going to present there.
Kate Lessard:
Yes, this is one of my favorite talks because it's something that I've used in my own life. I will be talking about five tips to ace your interview. So, whether you're talking to HR, a hiring manager, doing a technical assessment, five tips that are going to help you land that next step, dream job.
Josh Birk:
Nice, nice. Now, in fact, I'm going to be completely honest here. I'm like, I knew I had Kate on the DevPod, and I'm like, "Wait, what did we talk about?" And so I went back, and it was your case study, like how to write a good case study that you had presented at Forcelandia. So you've presented a lot of different topics over the years, and this is always a kind of a mean podcast trick, because I'm asking you to pick the favorite of all your children. But out of all your presentations, do you have one that kind of stands out that's like that was super fun to do?
Kate Lessard:
Oh, gosh. I think that changes year over year.
Josh Birk:
Sure.
Kate Lessard:
I get really connected to one each year, it feels like.
Josh Birk:
Yeah.
Kate Lessard:
So right now I would say the Why Admins Should Learn Dev Fundamentals or Why Admins Should Learn Dev Fundamentals is probably my favorite. I think that's the most relevant-
Josh Birk:
Got it.
Kate Lessard:
-To my life. And so, that's the current favorite, but ask me next year.
Josh Birk:
And I will tell you, as the life of an evangelist, chasing after the next shiny object is actually a very good habit to have. So you're on the right track. All right, well, if people want to hear about the interview tips, they'll have to visit you in Denver for Mile High Dreamin'. For the other stuff, we'll see you at Dreamforce. Kate, I have one final question for you. As a yoga instructor, what is your response when people ask, "Why do yoga?"
Kate Lessard:
Oh, my gosh, I actually don't know that anyone has ever asked me that.
Josh Birk:
Really?
Kate Lessard:
Which is funny. Why not do yoga?
Josh Birk:
There you go.
Kate Lessard:
I love to tell people that... People have this whole concept that yoga is this huge big thing, and I like to tell them to take it back a step. And if you're in class, if you're breathing, you're doing yoga.
Josh Birk:
Nice.
Kate Lessard:
And breathing is good for everybody.
Josh Birk:
Right. Yes. I love that. I love that. All righty, Kate. Well, thank you so much for the time and information. It was a lot of fun.
Kate Lessard:
Yeah, see you soon. See you in Denver.
Josh Birk:
See you in Denver.
I want to thank Kate for the great conversation and information, and as always, I want to thank you for listening. If you want to learn more about this show and being an admin in general, go on over to admin.salesforce.com. Thanks again, everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.
