Golden Hoodies and Giving Back: Salesforce MVP Spotlight on Nadina Lisbon
Hawk-eye editor with a passion for trailblazing Salesforce experiences
Welcome to Salesforce Radio, your destination for insights, news, and connections within the dynamic Salesforce ecosystem! In Episode 4 of Salesforce Radio, Alice Meyer pulls up a seat with Salesforce MVP and Golden Hoodie recipient Nadina D. Lisbon. Nadina is an ambassador for many inspiring Salesforce initiatives such as Salesforce Well-Architected, Ladies Be Architects, MuleSoft, and Dreamin’ In Color, to name a few.
She is passionate about giving back to the Salesforce ecosystem, sharing skills, and brainstorming big-picture ideas. Keep reading for all the highlights from this thought-provoking conversation and find out what Nadina thinks are the biggest Salesforce trends in 2024!
Alice: Hi Nadina, welcome to Salesforce Radio. It’s a real honor to have you join us today! You are a Salesforce MVP and Golden Hoodie recipient who plays an active role in the Salesforce community. Can you tell us about your Salesforce journey and how you got here?
Nadina: Yes thank you so much Alice for having me today. I see my journey as starting when I was doing my Masters. I wasn’t sure whether to do an internship or do another paper and I went for an internship! I got one at an ISV and that is really where I got started with Salesforce. How it came about is that once the internship was done, I worked for that company as a Salesforce Developer and then from there continued down the road I’m on today as a Salesforce Architect.
Alice: Can you elaborate on your MVP journey? How did you get there?
Nadina: Interesting…I think one of the things people think from a Salesforce MVP perspective is that you will do a few boxes and then you will automatically become an MVP! I’m very much focused in on the community and sharing back what I do. Being a Salesforce MVP is about three traits: it’s about generosity, your expertise, and your leadership. What typically happens with that process is you are either self-nominated or nominated by your community. In my case, I was nominated by my community.
I always tell people that even if I wasn’t a Salesforce MVP, I would still be doing all the communities I am doing because I am passionate about them.
Alice: Yeah, so for you it was an organic journey and the MVP route was a by-product of that? Of doing what you are passionate about and really love?
Nadina: Exactly!
Alice: You are an ambassador for many inspiring Salesforce initiatives such as Salesforce Well-Architected, Ladies Be Architects, MuleSoft, and Dreamin’ In Color, to name a few…Can you elaborate on some of these projects and what they mean to you?
Nadina: Yeah so keep me honest and make sure I haven’t missed any! So I will start with the MuleSoft side. It is very similar to the Salesforce MVP program, in terms of the MuleSoft Community side. When I inherited MuleSoft, I was told I would be leading the implementation but I actually didn’t know anything about MuleSoft! It was very interesting working through and learning about the API-led approach and about the community. I think one of the big eye-openers for me is that there is a big community outside of Salesforce. So I became a mentor and an ambassador of that program, and I still do a lot on the MuleSoft side, so I talk a lot about the Composer side of things which is now a big part of Salesforce.
In terms of the Well-Architected program, that is really around the Well-Architected framework and architect.salesforce.com. It is how architects show up in the community and are they following the best practices? Are they able to do the Well-Architected training and workshops and evangelize in terms of Salesforce best practices? When I first started Salesforce, http://architect.salesforce.com did not exist. You had to be lucky enough to work with other Architects and learn from Architects deep within the Salesforce ecosystem.
Now when it comes to the other initiatives like Ladies Be Architects and Dreamin’ In Color, those are my volunteer programs that I am associated with. Ladies Be Architects was started by the late Gemma Blezard, and it was really about bringing people together so that women see themselves as Architects. And when it comes to Dreamin’ in Color, it’s the same thing, it comes from a diversity perspective. To have that space within the ecosystem to show up and be seen. You know where your tribe is!
Alice: How do you think these diversity initiatives are enriching the Salesforce community?
Nadina: I would say that especially in terms of Dreamin’ in Color, they simply weren’t there, it didn’t exist. Before Dreamin’ in Color, if you asked me point blank “Do you know many black technologists within the Salesforce ecosystem”, all I would have been able to say is that I had seen a handful of them here and there. But at Dreamin’ in Color there is a space, tribe, and community. We are very excited, there is a conference coming up in June and it’s one of those things that was very much needed but didn’t exist. So when it happened, it was like of course this should be there and why wasn’t it there before?
Alice: So truly trailblazing in a way!
Along with the strong role you play in the Salesforce ecosystem, you work as a CRM Enterprise Architect. How do you balance the two roles? And how do they complement each other? Are you pulled in different directions?
Nadina: For me, the balance is there. As a CRM Architect, I am looking at high-level, strategic vision. And from a Salesforce perspective, I’ve always been (and I think this is why my developer career didn’t last long) looking at the top, looking at that big picture. And I always want to understand the boundaries within. How can I make sure I am at the best I can be? How can I make sure the customer I’m working with is the best they can be? Sometimes you are doing the best with the resources you have but you need to push best practices and how you can do things better.
So being in the Salesforce community has helped me as an Enterprise Architect in 2 ways: 1, as an Enterprise Architect you don’t get into details and the implementation side, it’s not so much hands on keyboard these days. So being in the community makes me see what are the challenges people are facing in the community from a high-level perspective. People work at different companies, they have different problems, they have different industries but they all work on one platform: Salesforce. And we are all trying to work out what’s the best way we can use Salesforce and bring the best of Salesforce to our companies. So being in the community helps there.
There is also a networking aspect to it, a lot of different roles and personas, and being able to talk to Architects, Developers, Admins, and Consultants…the list could go on and on in the Salesforce ecosystem. And I think it gives me a well-balanced approach as an Architect, to understand these different mindsets and to bring that information back to my company and share it across the community.
Alice: Your professional trajectory to becoming an Architect was non-traditional. Do you think there is anything fellow Salesforce professionals can learn from your path?
Nadina: When I look at the Salesforce community, where I was initially, I was gonna be a developer! I have a background in computer science so this felt right. But somewhere early on, while I was working at that ISV, I started to understand that it’s better to understand the overall platform. It’s better to understand not just the Apex side of things but also the administrative side of it. We are working on one platform so I wanted to focus on it. And what I realized as I went along to different companies and roles is that companies and jobs change but the platform stays the same.
And that’s when I put a lot of time into learning the developer side and also learning the overall platform. I remember when I saw my first Architect and understood what Architects do – that big picture – how deep and technical they are. And I thought this was interesting because this is the mindset I already had.
It’s very hard to make a change when it’s already a user story you are about to develop. But in that initial roadmapping and planning on an Enterprise level, that’s where big changes happen. So architecture and being an Architect at that 1000-foot view is very important. You need to be able to articulate these changes, because once they come back down to the development team and to other personas in the ecosystem, it is very hard to make the changes there.
As I was on my journey, the pivot from developer to Architect became natural. So I decided to study for this exam! It was a 2-year journey and a labor of love. But it’s one of those things where once you get it, you can say “Yes, I’m a Salesforce Technical Architect, I’m a trusted advisor on the Enterprise”. So it’s all been a very complementary journey. And in some ways, it’s untraditional because some people will focus on a specific industry, whereas I’m more of a generalist and I’ve always focused on the technology side – because you can learn the business side. Yes, it has been an interesting journey.
Alice: Yeah and it’s one thing to wake up one morning and say “I want to be an Architect, I have this big-picture thinking and these high-level skills” but as you say it is not a journey you can wake up one morning and complete! It is a journey that takes place over several years and it’s not something everyone gets to be. So you are one of the most trusted voices in the ecosystem.
What were your major challenges over that 2 year journey?
Nadina: When I started the journey, I was very hopeful. But somewhere along the journey, you have to pivot and be flexible because things won’t always go the way you planned. And so you have to have a lot of mental strength to go through the journey, it can be especially hard on you and your family. You need support. I didn’t have a lot from my company at that time so I had to dig deep and be persistent!
Alice: In our experience, the community is hungry for quality Salesforce content. What do you think are the biggest content gaps right now? And what kind of content do you think Salesforce users want to consume?
Nadina: Yeah I mean there is a couple different things. There will always be that content that is role-specific. So if you are a developer, you want to understand what are developer best practices, if you are an architect you want to understand the overall picture, if you are an Admin you want to know how you can be more efficient. I think that role-specific content people will always be hungry for.
I think a lot of content that might be missing is high-level executive content. I think it exists within companies, so for example “What are executives thinking about? What’s keeping them up at night?” Within companies, this exists and you know it in your own company but outside of that, if you want to know what people are thinking about right now, Google might tell you AI or decision-making is top of mind. But what about these things?
So I think that type of Executive content is missing. And while most people are very technical, Executives are very time-deficient, they only have so much time so you need to have brevity. So to get across information briefly so that they can make a decision, it’s a very interesting scale and interesting way to present information. Because you need to condense information without losing meaning and I would say that kind of content isn’t available.
And for people outside of Salesforce, there’s of course ways to get in like Trailhead and best practices but it isn’t always clear how skill sets translate to a Salesforce role. Even if you enter tech for the first time, you have skills and experience you can re-purpose within Salesforce. And that brings a lot of value.
Alice: So that’s very interesting and you make a valuable point, that even people starting out in Salesforce for the first time have a lot of value to offer and unique skills.
Talking about content, you have just launched a podcast! TechSips with Nadina, right?
Nadina: I launched it on my birthday! That podcast I have been thinking about for a while now. I didn’t want it to be just Salesforce-focused because I work across multiple CRMs. I wanted it to be that high-level executive talk that is very simplified, a very short form, and put a few points across from my perspective.
Alice: As a CRM Enterprise Architect who works across multiple CRMs, what makes Salesforce special?
Nadina: As an Enterprise Architect, one of the reasons I really love the platform is that again whenever you go to one of the big conferences like Dreamforce you always know what the strategy will be. There is no confusion! As we talk about AI and Data Cloud and how it fits into the Enterprise, there is no confusion. Salesforce has come out and said these are our capabilities and this is how we are going to empower you as customers. And that’s something I have always loved about the platform is that it is very open and honest in terms of trust. It is easy to get in and figure out what you need. And the message will be repeated. Whether or not you can come to Dreamforce, the message will be accessible. And the same goes for the other conferences. When something is going wrong, you can tell in the community and the other way around.
Alice: In the last year, we have seen the world transformed by the rise of AI. Salesforce has embraced this with the Einstein 1 Platform. Do you think AI will be the biggest innovation in the world’s leading CRM in the upcoming years? Or are there any other interesting trends and features you see emerging?
Nadina: I think from the Salesforce perspective, it is going to be what partners are bringing. Salesforce themselves have a suite of things they are doing across all the Clouds. So I think productivity is also going to be a big thing. Enabling the business is going to be huge. And what partners are doing in terms of AI capabilities built on Salesforce.
Alice: You are a well-known Salesforce influencer with a genuine passion for helping others. Where do you see yourself in the Salesforce community in 5 years from now?
Nadina: That’s an interesting question. I always have a long strategic roadmap that I don’t share publicly. So it’s two-pronged. I have done the big Salesforce CTA exam and now I’m doing all the different things I didn’t have time to learn. So across the industries, the different Clouds, MuleSoft, I want to get more up to speed on Data Cloud. The next 5 years is strengthening that position from a Salesforce perspective.
Personally, in the next 5 years, I am focused on strategy. I want to be honed in on digital transformation and CRMs as a whole. What is the prescriptive guidance I can give to organizations?
Alice: We can’t wait to see what you do next! What do you think is your superpower when it comes to mentoring others and being a leader in the CRM world?
Nadina: I think for me, I am very much an introvert. An interesting skill I have honed is that I listen to people not just to respond but to understand what you want to do. So I strive to understand people’s mindsets. I see many people who don’t know what they want to do! And I see myself in that. Had you told younger “Developer” Nadina she would be an Architect, I would never have seen it. I have that skill of meeting people where they are and understanding the things they aren’t saying. As a mentor, I want to tell people that there isn’t one path but multiple paths. And how you get there isn’t as important as what you learn along the way!
Alice: That’s really well said and there is a lot of overlap there between the mind of an Architect and that big-picture thinking. Understanding why people do what they do and what they want as well as reasons and motivations behind different things.
In closing, is there anything you want to leave our viewers with?
Nadina: As you go through your Salesforce career, just remember that the journey should be fun. Don’t compare yourself to what others are doing, don’t compare yourself to me. Make sure you are doing this for yourself. As you go stay curious and stay adaptable and do it for you!
*Note: This article is an edited transcript of the interview with Nadina Lisbon.
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