Mary Tan participated in the 2008 San Francisco BizAcademy. She shares her experience with the program and her experience as an intern at salesforce.com.
I attended BizAcademy 2008 during Spring Break and was the VP of Marketing for my team. That year my team was assigned to sell a service in which we help businesses improve their department communications. The first few days of the program were really fast pace. The program started off with the staff introducing us to Salesforce; they told us about its business, founder, web application, and contributions to the community. Afterwards, they explained to us the process of starting a business. As I listened, I learned what an entrepreneur is, what a business needs in order to start, and what responsibilities business owners must have. BizAcademy had many great volunteers from Salesforce, MYEEP, and Y.E.A.H that gave us valuable advice and challenging activities. One of the useful advice they gave us was, “think outside the box”, which inspired us to think creatively in many of our presentations such as coming up with our company name and thinking of solutions for our clients.
During my team’s first presentation to our BizAcademy staff, we were not prepared to answer one question a staff asked; as a result, our presentation did not go as well as our two competitors. We ended up not being able to choose our company location since the other two teams got to pick before us, but we remembered this incident as a lesson in that we must be more prepared and learn what to do if we don’t understand a question. During our next presentations, I started to make outlines before the next day in order for my team and me to have a better idea of what we should say. My team also took more opportunities to explain ideas to each other and asked Salesforce volunteers any important questions we still had time to ask.
Later on, I was assigned to create a trademark logo for my company. Coming up with a trademark logo was not easy because I did not consider myself to be a very creative person. I sketched a few drawings of a light bulb coming out of a cracked open box to emphasize “thinking outside the box”. My teammates liked the idea of the light bulb symbolizing thinking of new ideas, but they suggested that it might be better if the trademark also symbolizes communication. Agreeing with the suggestion, I drew telephones coming out of the cracked open box and linking the light bulb. Later, we also noticed the cracked open box can also emphasize our slogan, “We Crack Open Your Communication Barriers to Success”. So our trademark logo constituted three ideas: cracking open communication barriers, with the box being cracked open; thinking outside the box, with the light bulb coming out of the opening box; and new ideas on improving communication, with the telephones linking the light bulb. Many of the BizAcademy staff liked it, so my team and I decided to draw the trademark logo really large so it could be the primary focus on our advertising poster.
At last, we were given our first clients, Salesforce’s Support and Finance Departments, and we needed to come up with three solutions to improve their communications with one another. Coming up with our third solution was the hardest: we needed to help the departments get to better know each other as friends rather than just as coworkers to ensure better trust between them. At first my company came up with ideas that involved the two departments hanging out together in the office, but a staff suggested that it will be better if we have an idea that can be more enjoyable to the department employees—and being in the office is definitely not very enjoyable. This suggestion led us to come up with a solution that involved taking the departments to Hawaii with discount fares and free hotel—since Hawaiian Airlines is a Salesforce customer. The idea seemed funny when we first presented it, but our clients loved it. This experience made me felt more confident using extraordinary ideas on my school projects. Now I know that these ideas are worth trying and can make a lasting impression if I show people I have made an effort to add creativity. When it was time for our final presentation to the most important people of Salesforce on what we learned from BizAcademy, I decided to do an outline again by listing everything we learned from the beginning of the program to the end. The outline helped my team organize their ideas in our PowerPoint, and our presentation ended up being the longest. The staffs and employees were impressed and one of them even asked about our advertising poster.
Being part of BizAcademy was a very rewarding experience. From doing all these challenging activities, I got to learn to be more confident and organized. The many presentations we presented helped me improve my speaking skills and eye contact. The continuous write-ups and outlines I prepared before the presentations helped me improved on time-management and organizing ideas. Everything I learned at BizAcademy is very useful, and it can definitely help me later in life.
Salesforce continued to offer me opportunities after high school by offering me an internship as a Sales Operations Administrator. As an intern, I helped archive the documents of Salesforce customers using the Salesforce web application and Microsoft Excel so the documents can be easily tracked from the company to their storage facilities. In the beginning, the internship tasks looked easy; later on, things got more complicated when I encountered some companies that had multiple purchase orders and had their names changed multiple times. I asked my manager, Claire Allen, and coworkers about it, and they helped me better recognize documents and company identification. My coworkers and I developed a good relationship in which we enjoyed getting to know each other. They also gave me advice on preparing for college and maintaining a good working attitude.
During the internship, I was given the chance to be part of the Mentor/Mentee program in which they provided me with a mentor who was also a Salesforce employee. My mentor and I are both Asian Americans who grew up in San Francisco and have much to relate to. My mentor helped me with revising my resume and told me about her college experiences. She is very supportive of what I do especially when my college experience was not going well this year. I find my mentor easy to talk to, and we keep in touch after my internship.
I want to thank Salesforce for enriching my educational experience. Through its programs, I get to know many wonderful people. I think BizAcademy is the best contribution Salesforce can give to high school youths. I hope Salesforce can continue its contributions in helping youths enjoy an amazing educational opportunity.
