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 (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/b...) 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!


 


Podcast swag


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Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store (https://trailheadstoreamer.com/catego...)

Learn more

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Salesforce Developers Podcast Episode: Creating User Stories with Kate Lessard (https://developer.salesforce.com/podc...)


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WITness Success (https://witnesssuccess.com/)


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Forcelandia (https://forcelandia.com/)



 


Admin Trailblazers Group


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Admin Trailblazers Community Group (https://sforce.co/4977GHH)



Social


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Kate on X (  / salesforcek8  )


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Salesforce Admins on LinkedIn (  / salesforce-admins  )


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Salesforce Admins on X (https://x.com/SalesforceAdmns)


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Mike on Threads (https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/)


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Mike on Tiktok (  / salesforce.mike  )


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Mike on X (https://x.com/MikeGerholdt)

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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 lik...