The Crew
The people who taught Glen Salesforce
I got hired as a Salesforce developer and basically learned on the job. These are the people who carried me until I could carry myself.
How it was
Glen showed up at Innovate! Inc as a Salesforce developer who did not, strictly speaking, know Salesforce. He had an engineering degree, a background in finance, and the kind of confidence that comes from not yet knowing what you don't know.
What followed was years of being carried. Not in the pejorative sense — in the literal sense. These people taught him Apex. They taught him how to write triggers that wouldn't blow up in production. They reviewed his pull requests when his pull requests were embarrassing. They showed up to Friday weeklies. They answered Slack messages at hours that no reasonable person would answer Slack messages.
The Salesforce developer Glen became is a direct product of this team. Every certification, every deployment, every client engagement that went well — the credit belongs here.
The core crew
Larry
Mentor from Day One
Still at Innovate. The person who kept Glen from getting fired. Patient when he had no reason to be, thorough when it would have been easier not to be. Everything Glen knows about writing production-quality Apex traces back to Larry sitting next to him and refusing to let him ship garbage.
Matt B.
The Other Mentor
Together with Larry, Matt figured out how to turn a finance guy with an engineering degree into a Salesforce developer. That is not a trivial conversion. Matt made it work anyway.
Chris
GSU Connection & Friday Weeklies
Glen misses the conversations from GSU and their Friday weeklies. The kind of coworker who made the job feel like more than a job. Good conversations are underrated.
Phil
Key Contact
Still in the orbit. Part of the network that didn’t dissolve when the calendar invites stopped. Phil is someone you keep in touch with because the relationship has real weight.
Laura
Core Team
Part of the core team that held everything together. Glen built her a shrine page because she earned it.
Senior Dev, 16 Years of Salesforce
Seven active certifications. The person you called when your SOQL query broke at midnight. Glen wants to loop Josh into what’s next with Delivery Hub because having someone with 16 years of Salesforce depth changes what’s possible.
View shrine pageLawyer Turned Tech Leader
Salesforce and public affairs professional. Lawyer turned tech leader. Connected with Glen on LinkedIn after the shrine page went up. “Thanks GB!”
View shrine pagePM/BA, EPA OPPT Program Plan
Catherine drove the EPA OPPT Program Plan. The kind of PM who actually made things happen instead of just tracking things that didn’t. Glen built her a shrine page because that work deserves to be remembered.
View shrine pageRob
Core Team
Reliable. Consistent. The kind of person who doesn’t make the highlight reel but without whom the highlight reel doesn’t exist. Every good team has a Rob. Most teams aren’t lucky enough to know it.
Ethan
GSU Crew
Part of the GSU crew. The Georgia State connection ran deep through Innovate, and Ethan was part of that thread.
familymang
GSU Crew
Part of the GSU crew. You know who you are.
But not HoldenWalker, ikr? jk lol
The broader Innovate family
Beyond the core crew, there was a wider network of people who made Innovate what it was. Each one contributed something to the culture, the work, or both. A team is never just the people you sit next to — it's everyone who shows up.
The GSU thread
Georgia State ran through Innovate like a vein. Chris, Ethan, familymang — the GSU connection meant there was shared context before the first standup. It meant the Friday weeklies had subtext. It meant the Slack channels had a frequency only certain people could hear.
Glen doesn't talk about GSU the way most people talk about their university. He talks about it through the people he met there who ended up at the same company, doing the same work, years later. That's not a coincidence. That's a network doing what networks do.
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Larry and Matt B.
If Glen has one piece of career advice, it's this: find your Larry and Matt B. Find the people who will sit next to you while you write bad code and not fire you. Find the people who will explain the same concept three different ways because the first two didn't land. Find the people who care enough about the work to care about the person doing it.
Larry is still at Innovate. That tells you everything you need to know about him. The kind of person who stays is the kind of person who was there for the right reasons in the first place.
Matt B. and Larry together figured out the conversion path: take one engineer with a finance background, add Apex fundamentals, subtract the bad habits, apply patience in industrial quantities, and eventually produce a Salesforce developer who could ship code without someone holding his hand. That took years. They gave those years willingly.
What comes next
The relationships didn't end when the job did.
Glen still hopes to get Innovate on Delivery Hub with unique logins for everyone. Not as a business transaction — as the natural next step for a team that already knows how to build together. Josh with 16 years of Salesforce depth. Jordon with public affairs and tech leadership. Catherine who can actually drive a program plan. Larry who is still there, still mentoring, still the foundation.
The best professional relationships are the ones where the shared history makes the future work better. Every person on this page represents a shortcut — not in the lazy sense, but in the “we already trust each other” sense. That trust took years to build. It would be a waste not to use it.
Individual pages
Some of these people have their own pages. Because some stories deserve more than a card in a grid.
I got hired as a Salesforce developer and basically learned on the job. These are the people who carried me until I could carry myself. The least I can do is make sure their names are on the internet, on a page I built, saying thank you.
Keep Exploring
Glen's Full Story
The complete arc from the beginning. Every act, every chapter.
Read moreContextAct IV: The Salesforce Years
How Glen learned Salesforce on the job at Innovate! Inc.
Read morePeoplePeople
Everyone who shaped Glen's story. The full roster.
Read moreShrineJosh Long
Senior Salesforce dev. 16 years. 7 certs. The technical foundation.
Read moreShrineJordon Schulman
Lawyer turned Salesforce tech leader. Public affairs professional.
Read moreShrineCatherine Nolan
PM/BA who drove the EPA OPPT Program Plan at Innovate.
Read moreTechSalesforce & Delivery Hub
The platform Glen learned at Innovate — and what he's building next.
Read more