Sima Samara fled to the Netherlands as a refugee, losing her job as a pharmacist and working as a housekeeper before Salesforce's Trailhead training program helped her become a software engineer. She now advocates for women's and LGBT rights in her community.
When I arrived to the Netherlands, I was literally in shock. You don't know the culture, you don't know their language. I left everything behind. Where should I start? That was the first question in my mind. I was really lost. I was so hopeless, I must say. When I was back home, women didn't have a voice or rights. They had so many rules. So I thought, I can express my feeling with art. Sharing a story about women rights, about LGBT rights. They have the right to have a freedom. Government gave me one warning and I supposed to, you know, stop. I was really scared. I was suffocating. I felt like. Like I was in the prison. And then I managed to get out. Refugees come with a very unique perspective towards the future. They have left many things behind. This makes them very driven, very enthusiastic. They have that extra kind of almost an X factor. Our organization helps refugees find roles in the Salesforce ecosystem. And we really think that Salesforce lends itself really well to being adopted by someone who is from a non traditional background. I was a pharmacist in my home country and now I was a housekeeper without any sense of direction. I would never have believed I would be a software engineer. I didn't know anything about computers unless I just turned it off, Turn it on. Gaspar was the teacher and he started to go through trailhead and in a way I got really addicted and I was like almost stranger. In two months, imagine you're a refugee who left your family and then all of a sudden you find a community that wanted to help and able to listen to you and advise you, you know, I felt home in the Netherlands because of them. They believed in us. When one of the team members came across Casper, they started talking about they wanted to help refugees and they wanted to train refugees. And we said, yeah, that's a pretty nice idea. And when we met Sima, it was very clear. She has this amazing, sparkling personality which immediately energizes you and the team. She's also very ambitious and she's not just a developer. She also takes all the rest into account. For me, Trailblazer takes the initiative to support others and at the same time think as one big community and really take steps from forward. There is a challenge pushing you to continue the whole picture and you can always grow. It's very important for me to be who I am and do what I love. My name is Seema Samara and I am proud to be a Trailblazer.
