Andrew Shanks
Oregon Humane Society
Shanks is the Salesforce Admin for the Oregon Humane Society. As a lover of automation and continued learning Shanks has found a wonderful home in the Salesforce ecosystem, including becoming a MuleSoft Mentor. He is excited to give back and share knowledge with his fellow admins as a first time speaker at Forcelandia.
Brett Barlow
Postmates
Brett Barlow has worked with Salesforce for the last 8 years, including the last 3 years at Google. His recent experience has been leading agile engineering teams to implement simple, scalable solutions on the Salesforce platform. Outside of Salesforce, he enjoys travelling and running around with his 2 snow dogs.
Courtenay Maynes Evans
Salesforce
After an intro to information systems class changed her world in 2011, Courtenay launched into a technical career and hasn’t looked back. As a Solution Architect at Salesforce, she works with business- and tech-minded people alike to solve problems, improve processes, and increase quality of work life. She is passionate about empowering women in business, especially through technology education, and is a 4x coach for RAD Women. She loves being a mom to her two boys and going to Muse concerts. Her caffeinated beverage of choice is zip fizz.
Evelyn Grizzle
Roycon
Evelyn is a Salesforce Certified Developer and Application Architect and 2023 Salesforce MVP Nominee. They enjoy full stack Salesforce development, most recently having built a series of Lightning Web Components that utilize a REST callout to a governmental database to verify the licensure status of a cannabis dispensary. An aspiring Certified Technical Architect candidate, Evelyn prides themself on deploying secure and scalable architecture. With over ten years of customer service experience prior to becoming a Salesforce Developer, Evelyn is adept at communicating with both technical and non-technical internal and external stakeholders. When they are not writing code, Evelyn enjoys coaching for RADWomenCode, mentoring through the Trailblazer Mentorship Program, and rollerskating.
Julian Duque
Salesforce
Julián Duque is a Principal Developer Advocate at Salesforce where he focuses on Node.js, JavaScript, and Backend Development. He is passionate about education and sharing knowledge and has been involved in organizing developer and tech communities since 2001. When he is not creating content, he is running role playing games for his friends or playing with his mini aussie Cumbia and his sphynx kitten Nefertiti.
Kate Lessard
Arkus Consulting
Kate began her Salesforce journey in the nonprofit world and instantly fell in love with the platform. Her career then took her into Sales Operations where she was able to hone her analytical and leadership skills. Now a 13x certified Delivery Team Manager at Arkus, Kate gets to spend her days customizing Salesforce for her clients. Her favorite part of her role is finding creative solutions for a plethora of use cases and improving the user interface to make sales teams produ
ctive. Kate stays active in the Salesforce community as a Trailblazer mentor, Salesforce certification SME, and co-leader of the Portland Women in Tech community group.
Mark Brandwein
Artichoke Consulting
Mark spent the first five years of his career teaching in an elementary school classroom. For the last 5+ years, Mark has applied lessons learned from the classroom to the corporate world, facilitating smooth change management and end-user enablement. He brings a fresh perspective to Salesforce implementation projects, and will be speaking about these topics at his Forcelandia debut.
Melissa Shepard
Melissa is a CTA, 32x Salesforce certified, CEO of Lizztech Consulting, founder of ScaleUp Archs & Architect Ohana Slack, Golden Hoodie, Mulesoft Ambassador, co-leads Boston Architect Community Group, Trailblazer Mentor, Ladies Be Architects Ambassador, Well-Architected Ambassador, Architect Dreamin Co-Founder/organizer and Northeast Dreamin organizer.
Neil Hohman
Neil Hohmann stumbled into Salesforce 3 years ago and hasn’t come up for air since. Having recently passed the Platform Developer I certification, he’s currently Apexing his way into becoming a Salesforce Developer. In the past, he’s been a cartoonist, pharmacist, and Tex-Mex accordion instructor. Although he’s from the States (born in Philadelphia), he’s spent the last 20+ years living overseas (including Rome, Warsaw, Mexico City, Brasilia, and Vienna). He loves SOQL. A lot. And thinks you should too.
Nikita Propokev
Pharos
Nikita is a veteran engineer and entrepreneur. He spent 9 years at Salesforce R&D, where he worked on key projects like building the first ever native CPQ application and bringing to life what would eventually become the metadata API. He was instrumental in several efforts including: Application Security, My Domain, Visualforce, and the first ever Cloud Security Scanner. After leaving Salesforce, Nikita launched a services company where he worked as an Architect on Salesforce implementation projects. His newest brainchild is Pharos- the only native observability tool that identifies and monitors every error across an entire Salesforce stack. Nikita is a thought leader on observability in the Salesforce ecosystem and has spoken at various conferences and webinars on topics like Observability in DevOps, Salesforce DevOps Center, and Salesforce Security and Observability.
Rafael Hernandez
Deloitte
Rafael Hernandez is a 21x Certified Systems and Applications Architect and aspiring CTA. He holds a bachelor’s in software engineering, an MBA and a master’s in technology, currently pursuing a BA in Phycology He is currently a Specialist Leader (Senior Manager) at Deloitte, He has been working in the Salesforce ecosystem for the last 9 years as a Salesforce Technical Architect and Developer and He was awarded Salesforce MVP recognition in 2020. He is also a published author of the book: ¡Soy adulto! (¿ahora qué?) which concentrates on inspiring young adults in Latin America. In his free time, he travels to Mexico uplifting new Salesforce talent with conferences and mentorship, He also teaches two accredited Salesforce classes at the Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan in Merida Yucatan, Mexico, since 2017 and recently created Kerrnandez.org a nonprofit to help students in Mexico graduate from college.
Janet Elliot
Kicksaw
Salesforce MVP, Manager, Solution Architecture @ Kicksaw, 13x Salesforce Certified, Sacramento Women in Tech Community Group Leader, Dreamforce / TDX Speaker, Tahoe Dreamin’ Organizing Committee, Legends of Low Code (Salesforce+). Passionate about helping people find their voice as a speaker in the Salesforce ecosystem and inspiring other women in tech to take on PD1 and grow their careers.