Scott Luikart, a queer Salesforce product manager from South Dakota, found community through volunteering and mentoring. He teaches Salesforce skills to homeless youth at Montrose Grace Place, cooks meals, and helps them access resources. His visibility in tech shaped his own path from admin to leadership.
I truly believe that we're called to being in community. And I think that I can be in community with people as a visible queer person. And I want other people to see that they can be a queer person in that same space and that they know that they're cared about. The town I grew up in is Custer, S.D. south Dakota is a really small community, and we build community in our church. We have a lot of love, but I didn't experience queer people growing up. Matt Shepard, the gay college student, savagely beaten last week in Wyoming. The first person I had awareness to who was queer was Matthew Shepard. And Matthew Shepard is a young person who was murdered in Wyoming. And he was left outside to die alone. There was fear for me. I hadn't yet come out. I wasn't sure that I was gay or didn't want to be gay. But when he was murdered, I very much said, well, I can't be that, because that's what happens if you come out. Queer. Visibility in tech, I think, is really hard, but I think visibility in tech is something that Salesforce has really advocated helping with. I want to see a picture of like, yeah, my career path in tech has been interesting. A person I met through volunteering was like, you should apply for this job to set up a pre sales team for a tech company. And then I got that job. So magically, the next day, I became a Salesforce admin. I made tons of mistakes, like brought down our ability to send invoices to customers for four days because I didn't know what I was doing. And I learned a lot. And I moved from being an admin to principal admin to now being a product manager. I spent a lot of my Saturdays going to Salesforce Saturdays. And that's where, like, we can commiserate over failure and we can talk about how to fix a problem. So there's, I think, beauty in the Salesforce community because we can do those things and support each other. I think we build identity over time. Once the chip's cooked, I'll take it out of the oven, and then we're gonna cube it. And I think that some of our identity changes. My perspective on queerness and Christianity in South Dakota in a small town is different than my perspective on it now being in Austin, Texas. Just be careful. That's a hot oven door. He is. Excuse me. I gotta.
Scott has a real gift for hospitality, and tonight he cooks a meal. And because Scott gravitates people towards himself, now we also have young adults who help him. What we're trying to do is help build community and help build relationships. And so it's really important for kids to feel like they can connect with these adults.
It's chicken fajitas tonight. Being an out queer person at a church where since we've had five kids come out in the queer community in the last three years is important to me. They can have conversations with me that other people can't. I remember being a person that didn't feel like I had community for a lot of times. I don't want people to have that moment. The reason I volunteer a lot goes back to growing up in South Dakota and my family left in not great situation. And there were people that were volunteers for nonprofit organizations that helped us relocate, help make sure that we got settled, helped make sure that we had Christmas gifts and years. So I've dedicated time to working within the church and I've dedicated time to working with Montrose Grace Place.
We'll have our youth night tonight. Whether they need a bus card or dinner, whatever they need. We have our beautiful clothing closet with all sorts of supplies and things that they need.
Montrose Grace Place is an evening drop in center for youth and young adults experiencing homelessness, housing insecurity. And we serve youth of all sexualities and genders.
Montrose Grace Place happens on Thursdays for me. I work my morning doing salesforce. When my time at work is done, I get in the car and I drive to Houston and it is a three hour drive and so it is a long day.
Unhoused youth is a very invisible population. What we do here is so unique. Every Monday and Thursday we open at 6pm we serve hot meals and youth really just get to like engage with adults, you know, forming some healthy relationships.
That is a great. When I started doing Montrose Grace Place does trillhead, I did it to get computers in front of these kids so they could apply for jobs or check in on their housing status. As we learned Jesus Wi fi is humble. I couldn't facilitate 10 different people asking 10 different questions at one time. I had to find a new plan. So I posted on Twitter and in the salesforce success community and I got four random people to say, yes, I get any.
I met Scott as a volunteer. He was implementing his mgp does trailhead activity, which he does with a couple of volunteers, comes in, teaches our youth sales force. They get to win gift cards and eat candy and like have fun. But at the same time they're learning this super valuable skill.
We're gonna be a creative bear today. Okay. It's a really like community oriented thing where the Salesforce volunteers that have come in have stayed a long time with us and even do more. I think that that's truly what the Salesforce community is.
Watching Scott connect with somebody who doesn't even know where they're gonna sleep tomorrow, where they're gonna get their next meal, and making them feel like I could do a computer job.
What you're doing is you're like trailhead gives a great platform for content. You already have 650 points. It's about enabling them to move into something new and this is just a way that they can continue learning. And that's what I care about.
When you don't see yourself reflected in the things around you, it makes you feel like you don't belong. And so seeing a queer person in tech coming in and teaching, that shows our youth that are also members of that community, they can do it.
I'm never gonna do big queer things like suing for marriage equality, but caring for kids at Montrose Grace Place is that little queer experience that I can create. I think that we have a limited time on this planet and we can't solve every challenge in the world. But I can solve the challenges that I care about most. Sam.
