Announcing the 2023 Salesforce America Higher Education Advisory Council

I am excited to introduce the officers and members of the 2023 Salesforce America Higher Education Advisory Council (HEAC). We have 27 total and 6 new members this year, all of whom are community Trailblazers! I would like to welcome our new members and extend my sincere thanks to those joining the HEAC alumni community. 

In case you’re not familiar with us, the council works with Salesforce and the higher education community to recognize and set common standards for the delivery of platform solutions to support the industry. We do this by:

• Leveraging our collective higher education and Salesforce expertise to make a difference on our campuses
• Maintaining a collaborative community that shares code, best practices, and documentation
• Identifying needs and advocating for solutions
• Connecting with new and prospective Salesforce higher education customers
• Participating in outreach efforts through webinars, blogs, Education Summit, and Dreamforce presentations, etc.
• Recognizing the diversity of functionalities and needs of higher education institutions

More Than Advisory

Despite our name, we do much more than advise! We are an action-oriented, highly committed group. This year our initiatives are focused on collaboration, connection, and community. The council will continue to host and facilitate office hours, and participate in the monthly Higher Education User Group meetings. This year the council will be building a collection of higher education-specific org charts, governance practices, project templates, etc. to be leveraged by the Salesforce higher education community. Additionally, we will be collaborating with our Salesforce partners via focus sprints to improve the Salesforce experience at colleges and universities. We regularly share best practices, answer questions from our constituency and Salesforce, plan events, and organize demos. 

Can We Help You?

While many HEAC members are active in Higher Education Trailblazer Community Groups, on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, the majority regularly support their colleagues through phone calls, web conferences, and even in-person meetings at events. Check out our member profiles to see what we’re up to at our home campuses and what expertise or experience we may be able to offer, then feel free to email or call us directly.

There are myriad other ways we support our community, from participating in Higher Trailblazer Community Groups, sessions at Dreamforce, Education Summit, Higher Ed Dreamin’, webinars, guest blogs, and The PodCACHE. 

Join Us!

Those of us on the council collaborate with our partners at Salesforce to provide feedback on products, pricing, roadmaps, and word-on-the-street issues of concern in the community. Of course, anyone at colleges and universities working with, or directly on, the platform certainly discovers opportunities for improvement — be it technically, with feature sets, new use cases, pricing, and contracts, etc. 

One of the most distinctive (and wonderful!) aspects of working in higher education is that, while we may compete for students to attend our particular institution, we operate as a public service community that supports the community and its constituents. We’re all trying to make the world a better place. Thus, there’s a good chance you went into a career in higher education because you support these ideals and, at your core, you enjoy helping others. If this sort of service orientation describes you, I’d like to invite you to take a further step and nominate yourself or a colleague for HEAC membership. Provide your contact information here, and we will remind you when applications formally open later this year. 

Find us and our colleagues in the Trailblazer Community Education groups.

About the Author

Frank Montoya
Enterprise Salesforce Senior Product Manager, Arizona State University

Frank Montoya has over 15 years of experience in higher education and technology.

In his current role, Frank serves as the Enterprise Salesforce Senior Product Manager for Enterprise Technology at Arizona State University. He also co-leads the Enterprise Technology Product Manager Center of Excellence. This experience includes managing the Enterprise Salesforce CRM and Marketing Cloud innovations, solutions, and stakeholder priorities. By facilitating the CRM and Marketing Cloud Center of Excellence and Enterprise CRM steering committee, Frank works with leadership to support a university-wide Salesforce CRM and Marketing Cloud strategy.

In his previous roles, Frank led Business Analyst and Salesforce implementation team, where he contributed to establishing the CRM enterprise data models, change management policies and procedures, and data governance. Frank contributed to the implementation of the university’s Enterprise Master Data Management, which has enabled complex enterprise data integrations.