Welcome Krystal D. Carter – Girly Geek of the Week!
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I’m not sure you will be able to read this post and NOT be impressed by what Krystal has accomplished and NOT be inspired to do more.  To me, Krystal is a quintessential Salesforce Champion!

Me:  How & when did you start working with Salesforce?

Krystal:  It was 2004, and my initial acquaintance with Salesforce was completely accidental. I was working as a Marketing Administrator for a medical waste company when we merged with another company who had been “using” Salesforce as a glorified rolodex. The VP of Sales had heard that I was pretty good with computers, so he asked me to take a look at Salesforce and see what I could do with it. The rest is history: it was love at first login. I spent the better part of that week transitioning a lot of static (yet highly sophisticated) Excel work into Salesforce.com and was able to increase our adoption of the tool to the 90th percentile.  I guess that caught someone’s attention because shortly after, Erica Kuhl reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in starting up a user group for the Houston area, and that was back in 2005. –And that’s how you do it!

Me:  What is your current role working with Salesforce?

Krystal: I am a newly minted VP in the Legal Management Practice at Duff & Phelps.  I was brought on primarily because of my Force.com expertise. We are a major partner with a few Contract Management applications, one or which is completely built on the Force.com platform. In addition to helping guide our clients through successful CLM implementations, my primary role is also to keep up with what’s new in SFDC and make sure that knowledge gets disseminated throughout our entire team. This is the first time in my +10 years in the SFDC space, that I am not focusing on the CRM side, but on a much more niche aspect of Force.com. It’s been a pretty exciting functionality and industry change. Congrats on the VP role!

Me:  What is your favorite thing to do in Salesforce and why?

Krystal:  Solve problems — of all kinds. At my last company, I was affectionately known as the Salesforce Cheerleader–at least I’d like to think I was known as such.  I had to explain to them that my energy was actually around solving problems, and Salesforce is the application that consistently allowed me to do that. If I had to pick one specific aspect of SFDC to call a favorite, I’d cheat and select two.  1. Visual Workflows and 2. the Process Builder.

Me:  Are you currently certified? And if so what certifications do you hold?

Krystal: I have earned my ADM 201, and DEV 401 certifications.  I am looking forward to making the Sales Consultant cert my next conquest.  Me too! 😀

Me:  What are some of your aspirations and/or goals when it comes to Salesforce?

Krystal:  I always like to say that Salesforce built my house back in 2008, and turned it into a home when I married my husband whom I met while attending Dreamforce, so all that’s left for me now is (wait for it – shameless plug ) to be a Salesforce MVP. It’s seriously one of my greatest aspirations in life.  This is a TooSaasy story if I have ever heard one – I love this! 🙂 ❤

Me:  Do you have any advice for women working with Salesforce?

Krystal:  Be fierce.  I tell my Salesforce.com Admin all of the time to walk in confidence that you know this revolutionary system, and you can take that knowledge and apply it in just about any industry in any area of the world.  Absolute Truth!

Me:  What kinds of things are you involved in,  and/or do you like to do outside of the Salesforce world?

Krystal:  I am totally geeked to have recently been accepted in the Big Brother Big Sister of Greater Houston (@BBBSTX) program, and I also serve as a member of the BBBS Young Professionals Board. I think it’s so important that kids have someone to help guide them and show them that life is completely what you make it, and to let them know that they have someone who is truly committed to being there for them and in their corner!

Additionally, I am on the board for United Against Human Trafficking (@UAgainstHT). Slavery is [still] an epidemic in this country, and because it’s not as blatant as other types of slavery, it goes unnoticed.  UAHT is really striving to educate and inform people so we can help fight slavery as it exists today. Not so ironically, I got involved with UAHT because of Salesforce and am helping drive its technical footprint in SFDC and Social Media…. all [of my] roads lead back to Salesforce.com.

I’d also like to [shamelessly] plug the Houston User Groups “HUG Gives Back” program started by Rachel Rogers (@rrogers09) which helps pair our local non-profits with Salesforce experts who are looking to volunteer their talents to worthy causes. This is HUG’s way of following the lead that Marc Benioff and other Salesforce leaders have created with their 1:1:1 model that [insert what it does].  Their leadership has really helped shaped my view of giving back.  Consistently reinforcing the sense of community and philanthropy at Dreamforce every year gives everyone in the SFDC ecosphere an opportunity to make an impact not only on the world, but on our own individual perceptions of our responsibility to this world.  Lastly, when I’m not doing any of those things, I like to spend my time collecting passport stamps.  Kudos, Krystal for kicking ass on the volunteer front!

Me:  Are you part of a Girly Geeks Chapter?

Krystal:  Yes. I’m a member of the greatest Girly Geeks chapter, home to our fearless GG founder! #TeamHouston – For those of you who may not know, that fearless founder is Geraldine Gray 🙂

Just to add, Krystal was a panelist for a Dreamforce Session –  Houston We Have A Solution and was also featured in How Salesforce Changed My Life blog post!

It was a pleasure getting to know you Krystal and thank you very much for sharing!  You are definitely an inspiration!

For those of you that want to follow Krystal, here are her links:
Linkedin:  www.linkedin.com/in/kdcarter
Twitter handle:  @kdcSFDClifer — follow me: I follow back, and I actually tweet
Sfdc Community link: https://success.salesforce.com/_ui/core/userprofile/UserProfilePage?u=0053000000AJ9u3
Blog:  www.kdcarter.com  the blog portion “My Life In Salesforce” is currently under construction but otherwise my site is fully functional!
Aboutme:  can also be found at www.kdcarter.com

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