Using AI to Make an Impact: How This Salesforce Employee Paved Her Career Path

This article was written in partnership with The Muse. Check out the full article for even more behind-the-scenes Q&A.

Tina Bensman would be the first to tell you that although she’s always loved to solve complex puzzles, she never would have pieced together her own career journey.

As a teenager growing up in the 1990s, Bensman was an unapologetic techie with a nose for business; she found great satisfaction in building websites, taking apart VCRs, and breaking open computers to learn how they worked. “I’ve always been focused on business, loved telling stories, and interested in dissecting puzzles,” she says. “At the same time, I had a deep curiosity about what makes people tick and why.”

That innate curiosity led to a career with many paths — from launching her own film production company to founding and running her own wellness center. But, after an amazing eight years, she knew it was time to move on to the next chapter — though she didn’t think that her eclectic work history would attract potential employers.

“When I closed the wellness center, I felt very depressed, defeated, and fearful that I wouldn’t be hirable because my resume was so random and bizarre,” she says.

But it wasn’t long after she updated her LinkedIn tagline that a Salesforce recruiter connected with her about an opportunity. Tina remembers almost not responding to that message — but despite her doubts, she applied for the role ... and landed it.

Today, she’s an Engagement Delivery Manager within our Customer Success Group, a role in which she’s able to solve customer problems and cultivate meaningful relationships with team members, internal leaders, and external stakeholders.

And, not only does she help her customers thrive, she also spends her time as a pro bono fellow through the Salesforce Accelerator - AI for Impact, a philanthropic initiative to help purpose-driven organizations gain equitable access to trusted generative AI technologies.

Through the Accelerator, Tina was paired with non-profit CodePath.org to help them use AI to further their mission of providing courses, mentorship, and career resources for Black, Latino/a, Indigenous, and low-income students. Discover more in the Q&A below. 

What are your core responsibilities as an Engagement Delivery Manager, and why does this work excite you?

Engagement delivery is a fancy way to say project manager within the Professional Services organization of Salesforce. Businesses that use Salesforce products work with the Professional Services team if they want help solving, building, or managing their unique setup in the various Salesforce clouds. My expertise is primarily in Marketing Cloud.

I’m responsible for the health of any service projects that come my way, which includes keeping on track with the budget, managing the project scope and schedule, and fulfilling team members’ needs to ensure that our clients get what they need to succeed.

But what energizes me the most is putting the puzzle together and keeping it together so everyone, not just the client, can be successful. The work is fulfilling and allow[s] me to embrace my techie brain and have the opportunity to connect empathetically to customers and my project teams - both which lead to great success. I feel impactful!

Tell us more about how you use that skillset to help more than just Salesforce customers — but also the community around you. How is that unique to Salesforce?

[Editor’s Note: Tina takes part in Salesforce’s pro bono volunteering program for employees, Impact Exchange, which uses AI to match employees with purpose-driven organizations. The volunteers help non-profits achieve their technology goals. In only the first three months of 2024, the Impact Exchange has already logged over 500 hours of volunteer time!]

Salesforce walks the walk. The pro bono program proves that giving back is embedded in the Salesforce culture. It’s easy for companies to say, “We care about giving back,” but it’s another thing to also provide your employees with an endless supply of opportunities and resources to do the work.

Lending out my tech or management experience [to the pro bono program] was a no-brainer. Not only does it feel wonderful to help someone, but it makes a difference to so many who reap the benefits of the changes you helped make happen.

Can you go into more detail about the AI technology that Salesforce volunteers used to help CodePath.org?

In this particular project, we worked with Slack and Tableau. CodePath.org already uses Slack internally to communicate with their team, get answers to questions, and more. But, the team at CodePath.org found that so much time was spent on Slack tracking down information, waiting for someone to analyze it, then recreate it into graphs for presentations to get grants, etc.

So because Slack is already a part of their workflow, together we solutioned and built a custom AI Co-Coworker Bot that will be completely integrated into their normal workstreams.

Ultimately the goal with the Tableau portion of the project was to create visual graphs based on data using natural language processing. So, that means someone non-technical can just ask in simple language for what they need, and it could be created. These visualizations are crucial for funding their amazing efforts and currently take a lot of manual data analysis and design work.

Helping CodePath.org to imagine and solution something that would take them days and turn it into minutes — life changing. And imagine what more they can do with that time saved! It’s important work, not just busy work.

What advice would you give to those striving to pursue a career in the B2B tech industry?

If you’re drawn to tech, there are many free programs and tutorials online that can teach you code of any kind. That’s how I learned. 

| Further your coding skills with our Code Builder Basics on Trailhead.

There are many roles at Salesforce, so the specific skills vary. Being a self-starter, caring about outcomes, and having a desire to innovate are important. Specifically, there are Salesforce certifications for Sales, Service, and Marketing Clouds. Employees are encouraged to earn a variety of certs, so if you come to the table with them, it’s a huge bonus.

Most importantly, you just have to go for it! If you have imposter syndrome or believe you don’t have the chops, that’s OK. That’s just a protective part of yourself that’s worried. Don't ignore it. Instead, ease your anxiety by saying, “Thank you for always trying to protect me,” and then apply anyway.

Interested in joining the Customer Success Group like Tina? Check out our open roles and join the Talent Community to get notified of upcoming events near you, open jobs, and more!