Deb Van Zegeren
“Sometimes you don’t want advice, you just want somebody to say ‘I know how that feels.”
Deb Van Zegeren wears many hats at the Cutaneous Lymphoma Foundation, a patient advocacy organization for a rare form of cancer. And that suits her just fine. The nonprofit has a worldwide reach and a staff of five. As with any small organization with a large mission, there is a lot of crossover between roles.
Shortly after Deb started with the Cutaneous Lymphoma Foundation, the organization needed assistance with a migration from Classic to Lightning, and Deb found the kind of help she was looking for with Database Sherpa. There were challenges along the way, like migrating Notes and Attachments, a specific object that was going to become obsolete. At first, it seemed that the only options were to leave this valuable information in Classic, or to perform a complicated and time consuming migration process that was hard to fit into her schedule.
Eventually, Deb found a tool developed by Doug Ayers that made her migration of Notes and Attachments a snap. She finds tips like these incredibly valuable for solo admins. She even presented about her migration experience with Ashima at Midwest Dreamin’, hoping to make the path easier for others.
Deb finds community as a member of the Salesforce Nonprofit User Group for Michigan. She participates in the HUB. And she has also been involved in a Database Sherpa practice group almost since its inception. The thing she has found most refreshing in all her Salesforce communities is a “sincere wish for others to be successful.”
Deb appreciates the thread of friendship that runs through her Salesforce communities. Her Database Sherpa practice group has been jokingly described as “part therapy group and part Salesforce.” She says “I think what is really valuable to me is that they know the language. When I talk about Salesforce, I don't have to explain to them what I'm talking about. They get it. Their eyes don't glaze over like my coworkers' do.”
Even when talking about technical challenges of a small nonprofit, she recognizes that empathy is so important, “especially this past year when all of us have felt like our work life has changed, even if you already worked at home. It’s been a different year for all of us, with COVID.” She appreciates knowing that once a month she’ll get together with the group, talk about the challenges everyone is facing, and share plans with Salesforce where others might have insights. Even if the answers don’t come right away, “Sometimes you don't want advice, you just want somebody to say ‘I know how that feels.’” After all, what are friends for?