A few months back we welcomed our new Program Coordinator, Marciana Davis, into the fold. With her past experience as a source of inspiration, Marciana came in with a ton of great ideas to improve upon our current program offerings, more specifically the Summer cohort that we launched in 2020. In seeing the increasing demand for Salesforce Admin Exam Prep, coupled with her insight from being involved in similarly styled cohorts within other organizations, Marciana’s approach was to fill in the gaps to ensure a more structured and interactive cohort experience for participants in 2021.
Marciana started out by creating a thorough program curriculum that mirrored the Salesforce Admin Exam Outline, this, of course, had to be modified just shortly prior to the start of the cohort as Salesforce had made an interesting change to its’ outline. She then decided to do informational sessions prior to the start of the cohort to set the proper expectations for cohort participants and allowed the news to spread by engaging with her extended network to gain the interest of volunteers for mentoring and session facilitation.
Marciana even created swanky QR Codes to recruit both cohort participants and volunteers!
It was critical to get session facilitators who were not only Salesforce Certified but those that had the day-to-day experience of working within various instances. Marciana and Brian Owens (our Assistant Director) both leveraged their extended networks to get some heavy hitters within the Salesforce Ecosystem to join in on the fun!
Allow us to take a moment to acknowledge our Volunteer Session Facilitators and Mentors
CeCe Adams – Manager, Platform Development at 7Summits, an IBM Company
Devin Compton – Cloud Consultant at Cloud for Good
Mike Ravagnani – CTO at Revolution Group
Jonathan Forester – Business Analyst at Crosspeak Solutions
Brian Owens – HBCUforce Assistant Director and Business Systems Analyst at Regions Bank
Chris Argonish – Lead Solution Engineer at 7Summits, an IBM Company
Royal Randolph – Principal Architect at Royal Randolph & Co
Medhanie Habte – Salesforce Consultant at Slalom
Shaniqua Fields – Junior Systems Administrator at Pace Center For Girls
Tiffany Spencer – HBCUforce Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Esor Consulting Group
Janelle Fields – Software Engineer at USAA
So just how successful was the "8 Week Summer Challenge"? Well, we're glad you asked!
Among the 14 participants...
2 participants had perfect attendance
3 participants earned their certifications very shortly after the cohort
3 participants landed Salesforce roles during their participation in the cohort
... and just what did our participants have to say about the experience?
We'd like to thank and congratulate our participants and volunteers. A job well done to all!
Interested in joining the NEXT "8 Week Summer Challenge"? Join our Waitlist Here!
HBCUforce is a nonprofit organization that partners with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to implement programs that provide early access to cloud computing careers. Our vision is a more diverse and inclusive tech workforce. Donate today!