About Me
I came from modest beginnings in the great city of San Antonio, Texas. I learned a lot growing up in the environment of uncertainty, chaos, and lack of any structure which set me on the path to join the US Air Force (USAF) two days after high school graduation. The USAF provided me the necessary structure, discipline, and direction that I needed and set me on a path to success in my life. When serving in the USAF, I was a combat medic and nurse where I learned to deal with numerous demanding situations which helped me to form the mental strength to handle the many challenges in my professional life later in technology. It was a life changing experience for me, and I learned a lot which set the course for my life from that point forward.
Upon being honorably discharged from the Air Force, I took advantage the GI Bill and was fortunate to be accepted to the University of Texas at Austin where I earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems. I later on earned my MBA from Texas State University.
My journey in technology began after college with early CRM systems such as Onyx and Clarify, with myself eventually finding my way to Dell in 2004. It was at this time in 2007, while living in London, I was first exposed to the Salesforce platform. I was leading the implementation of Salesforce for Dell from their legacy system for the global partner users. After nearly a 10 year stint at Dell, I accepted a position at Salesforce as a Success Engagement Director improving customer success through the delivery of both Salesforce and Integrated Partner Solutions for large enterprise customers. Since then I have been fortunate to work at Fidelity Investments as Vice President of CRM Strategy and Engineering leading, and currently I am employed at Amazon Web Services as CRM Strategy and Platform Lead.
While working for Salesforce, I assisted with the initiation of Salesforce’s Vetforce program and dived deep on multiple parts of the programs beginnings. On October 26th 2014 on I35 in between Dallas and Austin, Kate and I had just attended Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within and I had this burst of energy along with an aha moment. I said to Kate “What if we started a 501c3 non-profit which partners with Salesforce and focus’ on helping military veterans and mil spouse’s transition into a career in Salesforce?” Kate looked into my eyes as to how serious I was. Along with one my best friends Joe Castro, we jumped headfirst in starting Merivis and have not looked back since. With 5K of our own money, we began Merivis that following summer of 2015 and one year after the idea, we began with that very first cohort in Austin Texas. Since then we have had over 18 cohorts and many success stories of veterans and military spouses blazing trails in their new careers.