Pallavi Agarwal is a Trailblazer | Salesforce

2018 was the first time I went to Dreamforce, but I couldn't afford a ticket. So my friend's like, you can still come. A lot of the networking happens outside of Dreamforce. I just took her backpack and I pretended like I was part of the conference. And I would walk around outside of the official space and try to set up a coffee meeting or lunch. You have to hustle when you have to hustle. I'm Pallavi Aggarwal, CEO and founder of Candor Consult. My culture is something that means a lot to me. We uprooted our lives to be here. My parents sacrificed so much. Our entire family is entrepreneurs. The expectation for me starting my own company really came from my dad, but I just wanted to feel ready. It was just always something in the back of my mind that I have to do this. And over time, I just fell more and more in love with business. And until I was at a Salesforce cloud consulting firm. And that's when I kind of knew I was ready to start my own company. And that was the transition that in April 2018, I started Kander. It wasn't easy. I started from nothing, so I really thought through what I wanted our company to be. Kander chose Salesforce because they're focused on customers first, which matched our values. Educating our customers and teaching them and taking them on this journey of the product they've invested in. Create communities, give back. And that's what really mattered to me. The way I was introduced to the Trailblazer community was serendipity.

Pahlavi is a force to be reckoned with. I met Pahlavi a few years ago. She asked me about what it meant to be part of the Trailblazer community, and I told her how much of an impact it made on my life.

I was introducing her to other people in the community. It has turned like 3, 360, where she's now become this big connector and this big energy in the community.

They just take you, embrace you, and just support you in ways that you can't even imagine. It has made significant impacts for me, and I hope I can do that for someone else. Our ecosystem's not competitive. There's enough for everybody coming together to service the customer. Kander is now five years old, and I just reflect on that person without a ticket, walking around with a backpack to this recent event, having my poster hanging there, being able to speak on the stage. Those are only things you can dream of and the fact that I've achieved them. And all because of the support I'VE received in this community.