Adam Torres and Marisa Hambleton discuss the Power Up Conference.
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Show Notes:
Listen to coverage of the 2024 Power Up Conference: Together We Lead in Washington, DC. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Marisa Hambleton, Chief Delivery Officer at MH2X, explore women in tech and the Power Up Conference.
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About Marisa Hambleton
Specializing in delivery leadership of enterprise solutions on and around the Salesforce platform. For over 20 years Marisa has tackled complex software projects and helped companies achieve their strategic and technology goals. Building solutions on the Salesforce platform is Marisa’s greatest enthusiasm. She enjoys creative problem solving, and a hands-on approach. She keeps her analytical and quantitative thinking skills sharp by challenging the status quo around the technical analysis and development of system strategies while keeping the people first. Above all, she values trust and relationships forged with clients and colleagues.
She is experienced in project, program, and product management. Marisa is experienced in implementing full lifecycle solutions and meeting business objectives by aligning strategy and solutions. She is savvy in driving highly complex projects and managing global cross-functional teams. Marisa’s background includes overseeing teams operating domestically and internationally; working with global partners. She has a successful track record in working with dispersed and co-located teams working across cultures, geographies, and time zones. She is proficient in collaborating with dynamic teams from software engineers and sales, to operations and executives.
Marisa is passionate about technology and skilled in planning, organizing, scheduling, and project tracking from concept, specification, and design through delivery. She thrives under pressure and is practiced in coordinating with stakeholders during planning and execution with the ability to work under tight deadlines while coordinating several projects. Marisa’s approach is systematic, yet creative and innovative; she is direct in prioritizing and operates with high efficiency while minding key details. She can organize the chaos and deliver!
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today I am in Washington, DC for the Power Up Conference, 2024 with Gloria Felt, who’s hosting it.
And let me tell you, we got a packed, packed agenda. I’m doing an interview series for the conference and First off, I’d like to say, Marisa, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. I snagged you, snagged you for a couple of minutes here. My first thing first, how did you learn about the conference?
Where does this start for you? I learned from a friend back in Phoenix and in 2019, I attended my first take the lead conference in the Biltmore in Phoenix, and I met Gloria for the first time. Wow. And so that was 2019. And have you been kind of part of the community ever since and coming to things or here and there, or?
Yes, I have actually, no, not 2019 thinking the wrong year. I’m thinking before COVID, it was just after COVID, 2022. Okay. Wow. 2022. What’s one of the reasons why you originally decided to participate? It seemed like a great program, very women centric. I love the mission of achieving gender equality by 2025.
When I read that, I thought, wow, that’s aggressive. Yeah. Being a Latina, working in tech, where it’s still woefully, women are still woefully lacking. Latinas in tech are even more. So, and I love that mission. And after I attended my first conference, I was really inspired by Gloria and her mission and all the women and the energy and the sisterhood of all these women coming together and elevating each other.
Women in tech, Latina women, like, like how did you begin in tech? How, where’d that start for you? When I got a. Old CPM computer from my uncle. Wow. Back in, you were hooked. Like back in the day, what, what hooked you? Like, what fascinated you with it? Oh, it just, I wanted to know how this machine worked. I wanted to have the, write the instructions to make it do something.
And I, I went and got books and I didn’t know what I was doing. I was playing around and I got it to print. Whoa. So that was like a big achievement. And then I took. Cobalt in high school played around with the, what the trash 80 paid a lot of video games when I was Atari, when I was a kid and I was just, I was hooked ever since I just wanted anything to do with.
Technology, computers, machines, love it, love all of it. Now, at that time, that was, like you said, it’s uncommon now, so I can’t even imagine back then. Women in tech, but Latino women specifically, what did your family think? Everybody else was like, what? You want to do what? How was that? I’m just curious. Well, my father was a mechanic, my mother was a homemaker.
My, I think being around my father and just the cars. Yeah. So making it print is equivalent to, let me juxt, to like, making the car run almost, right? Yes, yes, yes. And so they were very Open they didn’t say anything. They’re so progressive. Yes, very progressive latino family. I would argue some i’m thinking of some of my family They’d be like adam you want to do what no, yes if they didn’t understand but that’s amazing So they encouraged you continue.
Tell me more about the journey so I Just stayed in it. I was lucky that my best friend also was a bit, we were both kind of nerds and we stuck with it to this day. We’re both working women in tech, Latinas. And you know, we went through all high school, college, university of Texas, El Paso and El Chuco as it’s affectionately known.
And technology was not a big part of our childhood. So we really had to seek it out. And, and I feel like that helped me. fervor for new things, tech, solving problems, a computer can do things that You know, people do like, Oh, mailing lists back, back in the day and just simple, simple tasks. Now we have chat GPT, so there’s AI.
I know a lot of people think it’s scary, but it’s a computer that’s following instructions. And I feel like the more women there are and Latinas and people of color in the technology space, we can have influence. We can have women coders that can find the bias that is generated by all the programming.
What kind of advice would you give to the fast forwarding a bit? Like nowadays from where you started to now, those that are women that want to what Latina or otherwise like that want to get into the industry that want that pursue tech and pursue that passion. What kind of advice would you give them?
Just do it. Just do it. I think that men more often are Raised to be bold and try new things and take risks and Latinos, especially there’s this still the cultural norms of, oh, technologies for, for boys or for men. And that’s so not true. Women are fantastic coders. They’re fantastic working in and around tech.
It doesn’t have to be the very deep technical skills like coding or art or technical architecture. It can be business analysis or project management. Which I did a lot for a lot of my career is I would work. I did coding early on, and then I got into project management. I stumbled upon the Salesforce community and that’s how I become an entrepreneur and CEO and founder.
And it’s been a fantastic journey. It’s, I love it. I love tech. Anything technologically involved is, is a passion of mine. Yeah. And. I think that more women can find that same passion and about Salesforce, by the way, it is a, a gateway to get into tech. That’s very accessible. You have free training and a great community of people that are involved to help, to help you get involved in all different kinds of roles for technology.
So bringing more women and people of color to tech. Thank you. What was it like making that transition or leaping to the entrepreneurship side of things because you’re pioneering in many ways Like what was it like doing that? Very scary. Oh my gosh I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was doing.
It was not an intentional Thing, unlike Gloria’s book intentioning, I wish I would have had that book back in 2009. I wish I would have met a lot of the women I’ve met through this take the lead community back then, because I was on my own. A lot of the entrepreneurs I knew were men. Actually, they were all men early on.
It wasn’t something I had planned. I was laid off from IBM. I was during the economy crash, you know, 2008, 2009. I just stuck with it. I, I just, I thought this is fun. It’s great. I get to be the boss. I get to decide what I do. I have small children at the time, two small children. My oldest son was just starting college.
It was an opportunity for me to earn money and replace my salary, maintain the life that I wanted that I didn’t previously have, because as a woman in tech earlier in my career, I Taking time off for a doctor’s appointments or children’s activities or just family in general, which has always been very important to me.
I didn’t have the option. It was one of those environments where if you want to take that time, you can just leave. Don’t come back because it was just very, it was a very strict, stern environment. Not family friendly, especially not woman friendly. A lot of times women went on maternity leave and didn’t come back.
So being an entrepreneur for me allowed me to, Basically have it all and really achieve the balance that people talk about the work life balance. I like to call it work life integration. Oh, I like that one. Yes. So, and that’s one of the terms that a lot of women in tech use. You integrate systems that are completely different so that they speak with each other and they work in harmony, harmony for an organization.
Your life can be that way. You can have, you know, working and family and earning money and helping your customers. Just being a good business, a good business person, a good citizen. Well, not corporate citizen, but a business person that also gives back to their community. Civic, like civic engagement, like all the other things you’re doing.
Looking back now, and this is obviously hindsight being 2020. The reason I asked this question, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners that watch this show, but you know, looking back now, was, is there anything that you would tell the Marisa that was just getting started as an entrepreneur based on what you know now?
Don’t be afraid to grow. From the beginning, like set that hold yourself back. Kind of like, yeah, don’t hold yourself back. And that is one thing that I really, I did do because I was so involved with. about entrepreneurship, my taking care of my small children, that the thought of trying to grow and scale a company and a consulting firm at the time, I thought that that was something that was out of reach for me, not just from a financial perspective, but the time that it took.
And I didn’t ask for enough help and I didn’t surround myself with enough women. A lot of the people I Encountered and that I networked with back then were men. They all had stay at home wives or wives that had more simple job. And so I would joke and say, well, I need a wife, which wasn’t fair to my husband, who was so very supportive.
And we started the business together. So it just, we, we said, well, gosh, you know, how do you, we need like a nanny or some, you know, somebody, which again, we, the whole thing, right. I know, but it’s great, but it’s, it was still a great journey. I’ve had the opportunity to. Learn so much and really become a very engaged community member.
I was very active with my kids, PTA, with my local neighborhood, with a community. I grew the sales, local Phoenix Salesforce community from a group of, you know, 10, 15 people meeting in the library. To well over 2000, just in the Phoenix community so that there was, we had a women in tech, I was a founding member of the women in tech that was girly geeks back then developer, Phoenix developer group, Phoenix user group for Salesforce.
And, you know, just bringing people in and giving them a place to gather and So you’re a community builder. Yes. By nature, by definition. That’s not easy, bringing together that many people over any span of time. I love parties, that’s what I tell people. So it’s like, I see our monthly user group meetings like, it’s just a party.
We’re having fun, talking about nerdy things and Apex code. What new, you know, love lightning features and AI sales forces, you know, what new things are they doing? What, what problems have you had and, and just bringing a little, you know, food or snacks and just your tribe, making it a warm, welcoming environment.
I’ve had a really good time. It’s a lot of work, but it’s, it’s fun too. Because I, I knew that I needed a community. I love people. I love everybody to have a good time and have fun. Which I think everybody should so Amazing it drove me. Well marisa. I want to say thank you for coming on the show today What I want you to do next is I want you to look into the camera I want you to tell people how they can follow you how they can follow your business how they can follow your journey Yes.
Hi, marisa hamilton again. You can find me. I’m very easy to find online I am a salesforce mvp and I also own a website Was just honored with a trailblazer award from take the lead for this conference. Thank you. So you can Google me, Marisa Hamilton. There’s a couple Hamilton’s, but I am the only one that is Salesforce MVP in the Salesforce community.
My website, mh2x. com in case you need to build some business systems with Salesforce. Awesome. And for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll put the links to the website in the show notes so that you can just click on it and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t hit the subscribe or the follow button yet, make sure you hit that subscribe or follow because this is a daily show.
Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new leaders, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and so you get that notification tomorrow and ready set. Thank you again. It’s been such a pleasure having you on.
Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you. Thank you.
