We recently asked Emily to join the Ladies Be Architects team as an ambassador, spreading the word in the Land Down Under, and we were thrilled when she said yes! Here’s her story!
Emily Hay is a Salesforce Women in Tech group leader, Dreamforce speaker, and Salesforce Certified Application Architect with over 9 years of experience working with the Salesforce platform. She’s a Kiwi currently living in Brisbane, Australia.
When not studying for Salesforce Architect certifications, she enjoys spending time with her two cats, Duke and Princess, playing video games, and in recent months, planning a wedding and honeymoon with her fiance, Eric.
Emily didn’t plan to have a career in technology. As an argumentative child, it was expected she would train as a lawyer. Unfortunately, University plans were put on hold when Emily fell ill with glandular fever in her final year of high school.
The illness drove Emily to drop out of high school. Emily found full-time work at an IT Help Desk where she had worked (since the age of 16) during school summer breaks, and so began her technology career. After picking studies back up a few years later, Emily received a Bachelor degree in Business (Management) at age 25.
After graduating in 2010, Emily took a job as a Database Administrator. In her first week on the job, someone asked her to build a Salesforce report, which was the moment Emily discovered she was actually a Salesforce Admin and had better learn a thing or two about Salesforce!
Tell us how you heard about Ladies Be Architects?
“I had followed Gemma Blezard on Twitter at a recommendation from Jason Lawrence (a Brisbane based Salesforce MVP). Gemma shared blog posts about her CTA journey and started talking about Ladies Be Architects, which sparked my interest.”
What feelings did Ladies be Architects inspire within you?
“At first, I had a sense of wistfulness, because I’d known for the past few years that I aspired to be an architect. I thought that goal was out of my reach, and certainly didn’t think I was capable of pursuing a CTA – I was convinced you needed to be an expert with code to even consider it.
“Once I learned more about the architect role and the CTA journey from Ladies be Architects, I realised that while it wouldn’t be easy, this is something that I can do. Wistfulness turned into a fire in my belly, and a desire to prove my doubting self wrong!”
Tell us why the CTA journey is important to you
“Women are so underrepresented as architects in the technology industry. I want to change that, and what better way than to become a CTA myself, and hopefully inspire others along the way to join me.”
What’s the next step for you on your Journey to CTA?
“I’m in the middle of studying to re-take my Integration Architecture Designer exam, and after that, I’ll take on the Identity and Access Management Designer exam which would get me my System Architect credential. Double architect in 2019, baby!”