We love showing off the awesome members of our #SalesforceOhana and sharing their inspiring stories. Today we caught up with Lesley Bell, Lead Solution Engineer (SE) for Salesforce Marketing Cloud to get insight into her journey from an Interactive Multimedia Design Graduate to becoming a SE here at Salesforce.

Where did you start out?

My degree was part 'techie' and part 'artsy', and although the techie side interested me, at the time I wanted to pursue a career in Graphic Design. To cut a long story short - I somehow found myself in Dublin, not working in Graphic Design but as a web developer for a large multinational. It was a great grounding for getting my foot in the door at a big company and gaining some work experience.

After a year I managed to talk my way onto a Graduate Programme at a different large multinational in Dublin. When I look back at those few years, I always smile. I met great people, had good fun and got my first experience working within a sales department. Being part of the Graduate Program at the time I could move around the business every 6 months, and I gravitated towards pre-sales after spending time in sales support and something just clicked. Was it the team? The management? Probably both. But I was lucky to be mentored by some great people; just like the new Graduates in Salesforce FutureForce are now.

Why Solution Engineering?

After a few years, the recession had hit Ireland, and after what I'm sure was 100s of job applications, I found myself at a large software company working in Cloud CRM Pre-sales. Software pre-sales was new to me and I had a lot to learn. I had to resist the urge to demo 'feature function', I even had to learn how to 'demo', and hadn't a clue what 'the cloud' was or the architecture that it was supported on. But eventually I found my feet and spent a few years getting up to speed with the various solutions. 

Why Salesforce?

Why not!! Salesforce is a great company to carve out your career. My first few years at Salesforce were spent as a Solution Engineer (SE) supporting Sales and Service Cloud. Marketing Technology was always an area I was interested in so I've now specialised and work as a Lead SE in the Marketing Cloud supporting the Emerging/Small Business team from Dublin. 

Three months into my new role, I still have a lot to learn - new products, new team, new Account Executives and of course new ways of working, but I am fortunate enough to not only work with great people who are helpful, and I learn from everyday, but also great products which I can be passionate about. 

As an SE - my role varies everyday. I could be delivering training to AEs or other SEs, hosting webinars, presenting at events, on discovery calls or demos with customers or even running on site workshops in another region. 

The most exciting part of my job is meeting customers. I love grabbing a coffee and a few colleagues from across the business, jumping into a room and white boarding a potential solution. There is always a buzz getting in front of a customer and 'wowing' them with a solution that helps them transform how they do business. 

I've worked in Solution Engineering for around 10 years across various tech companies and the SE role at Salesforce really is unique; it allows me to get creative and there is always a massive amount of innovation coming from the whole SE community. For me, it's the perfect balance of part 'techie' and part 'artsy' - just like my degree! 

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