makepositive’s Managing Implementation Consultant, Louise French, volunteers with social enterprise, Supermums, to help empower parents to retrain & learn to be Salesforce professionals.
Who are Supermums?
Supermums is a social enterprise that empowers mums (and dads – no discrimination here!) to retrain and learn to be Salesforce professionals. It typically appeals to parents whose careers have been put on the back burner to allow them to focus on their children. The Supermums course is a six-month program that includes webinars, hands on exercises and finally a real-world project for the students to test their skills out. To learn more about them visit their website here.
Why did Supermums appeal to me?
I was looking to increase the amount of volunteer work I was doing and really wanted to do something where I could see direct benefits. I looked at a number of different valuable charitable organisations offering a rage of assistance to people and causes but came to the conclusion that I could add the most value by using my expertise, which is of course, in Salesforce.
Supermums also really appealed to me because, while they will happily accept students of all genders, their programme is one of the few out there that is actively working to get more women into Tech, a cause that I feel very passionate about!
What do I do at Supermums?
I’ve been mentoring for 18 months now and look after just one mentee at a time. I provide support officially in two ways:
- Weekly catch up calls to discuss any challenges that they have come across whilst studying
- Marking their weekly hands-on homework
On top of this I try to add benefit by using my experience to help them understand:
- Best practice and why things should be done in a certain way
- Where to find the answers when they don’t know how to solve a problem
- How the Salesforce market works and the different job options that are available to them
I’ve found it incredibly rewarding and really recommend it to others who want to start mentoring, I’ve especially enjoyed seeing the development of my mentees from beginners to Salesforce professionals.
What does my Mentee think?
Louise’s current Mentee Anastasia Nemchenok had the following to say about her experience with Supermums:
‘I’m currently studying for Salesforce admin certification with Supermums – I absolutely love the course. It’s broken down into easily digestible weekly webinars, Trailhead modules and homework. Louise, my mentor, is always there to help with my (very many) questions and chat about the homework. The course gives great exposure to industry specialists: most of it taught by people who work with Salesforce on a daily basis. The assignments are challenging and hands-on. It’s a six month course, and I’m nearly at the end of it now – looking forward to my first real-world work experience! Oh, and the exam too, but less so.’
If you would like to find out more information about either the course or becoming a mentor yourself, everything can be found on the Supermums’ website at https://supermums.org/.
