Boomerang Spotlight - Leonardo Neves

Meet Leonardo Neves. Leonardo is based out of our São Paulo, Brazil office. He started his Salesforce career in 2014 as a Solution Engineer — a role he held for three years. He left for an opportunity at Microsoft but, after only 15 months, realized he wanted to return. Read on to learn more about Leonardo’s journey ...

In 2014, Leonardo came in to Salesforce via an implementation partner that happened to be one of Salesforce’s biggest customers in Brazil at the time. Back then, there were only 14 employees in the LATAM (Latin America) region so while Leonardo was officially a Solution Engineer, he also held some Account Executive responsibilities.

However, in 2017, Leonardo started a new career chapter at Microsoft. He felt he was joining a great company but before long, missed the company and technology that he’d grown to love. “I asked myself everyday, ‘Am I in the right place? Am I doing what’s best for my career?’”

Fortunately for Leonardo, his current Salesforce manager (also a Boomerang!) reached out, told him about a new team he was creating, and asked whether Leonardo was interested. “I knew this was my chance to go back to Salesforce and follow my heart — it wasn’t a hard decision!”

Leonardo liked the sense of teamwork and family at Salesforce and he missed feeling like he was part of a close-knit team who navigated challenges and shared successes together. “It sounds like such an easy concept, team spirit, but you don’t understand how hard it is to find or build unless you have been at Salesforce.” For Leonardo, ultimately it was both the people and the feeling of belonging that brought him back.

“It is interesting because the first time I was at Salesforce, we didn’t have this Boomerang program. Now that I am back, this is an amazing program and community to be a part of. The Boomerang Community helps people network internally and get their questions answered by people that have gone through the same process.” And returning felt natural.

“That feeling of coming home is absolutely real. You probably hear it from a lot of Boomerangs, and it’s 100% true.” Leonardo, his manager, and a close colleague also came back to Salesforce, all motivated by that unique sense of belonging and teaming. “I do not know how Salesforce does it, but it’s completely magic.”

“Typically, people expect you to know a lot of things when you come back to a company you worked at before, but Salesforce changes every day,” Leonardo said. That meant there were things he had to re-learn, or learn for the first time, upon his return. Leonardo’s a Solution Engineer, a role that he defines a ‘problem solver.’ He feels his primary job is to understand customer problems and solve them with Salesforce technology. He specializes in the Financial Services Industry and has worked with some of Brazil’s major Financial Institutions.

“The most important thing is to speak the customers’ language and help them innovate for the future — it’s a whole journey for them! From ‘knowing that Salesforce is the best solution out there’ to actually committing, understanding what we can do for them, and leveraging the full power of Salesforce.”

Beyond Leonardo’s role, his Salesforce career is all about continuous learning and development. Career growth is important to him so Leonardo has mapped out a clear plan to help him get to the next stage. “I have always felt supported. It’s important to note that the company can help, but your career is yours and you must own it.”