How Livia Viana Berto Forged Her Salesforce Career & Became a Mentor to Latin Women

Starting over in a new city was more difficult than expected for Livia Viana Berto. Find out how perseverance and the discovery of Salesforce helped Livia find her place. 

Today, Livia Viana Berto is thriving as a Salesforce Project Manager at the Carnac Group. She’s built a career in an industry she loves and is now empowering other women as leader of  Salesforce – Latin Women in Australia. Livia founded this group with the desire to help others grow their careers and overcome the challenges she faced when moving to Australia. 

Here, we talk to Livia about those challenges and how she’s blazed a trail for others to follow. 

What led you to Australia?

I graduated with a Bachelor of Administration in Brazil and worked temporary jobs as an intern at a bank and in tourism before becoming unemployed. At the same time, my husband was working very long hours and there was no work life balance. We knew that our lives could be different and so decided to come to Australia. We had lived here before and loved it. 

What was it like starting over in a new country?

My husband found a job right away, but I struggled professionally. I applied for more than a hundred jobs in business and IT and kept hearing no. I think there’s an unconscious bias that makes it harder for Latin women to find jobs in these areas. We’re often framed as candidates for jobs like cleaning instead. So while I looked for a permanent job, I worked as a cleaner, an assistant hairdresser, and a receptionist. 

How did you learn about Salesforce?

One day when I was working as a receptionist, I started thinking about my skills and what jobs I should apply for next. I was good at working with clients and building relationships and so I Googled these two things to see what type of jobs there were managing client relationships. 

It was then that I found out about CRM and began learning about Salesforce. I liked that it was super democratic; anyone can use Trailhead and learn Salesforce for free. So I started thinking about this some more and coincidently the very next day I was at a train station and I saw an advertisement for Salesforce. 

How did you kickstart your career? 

I found my first job in the Salesforce ecosystem by volunteering and I worked during the day while completing trails on Trailhead at night. I also read a lot of blogs and watched online tutorials to learn as much as possible. Preparing for my Salesforce Admin certification helped me to absorb the concepts I learned on Trailhead and I was able to pass the test very quickly. 

After the initial volunteer period, I was hired to work full time and later placed in a position as  Salesforce Admin and was promoted quickly to support several orgs as a support manager. However, I wanted to make sure I was learning everything and had a solid base on the platform, so I joined the Carnac Group and started over again as a Salesforce admin. It is the second best decision I made after deciding to work in the Salesforce ecosystem. They have been super supportive and given me the time and opportunities to keep building my skills. 

Tell us about Salesforce – Latin Women in Australia. 

Latin Women are still underrepresented in business, especially when it comes to leadership roles. I founded the group to help change that by sharing my knowledge and bringing more Latin Women into the Salesforce ecosystem. 

The group connects through WhatsApp and we hold webinars where we exchange ideas and share our achievements. It has grown very organically and, in just over a year, some of our early mentees have stepped up to become mentors. 

Carnac Group has supported the initiative as well and hired an intern from the group last year. The intern is Carolina Sales and she’s learning and progressing in her career even faster than I did. 

What advice would you give to others considering a job in the Salesforce ecosystem? 

There’s growing demand for Salesforce skills and if you work hard, you will succeed. That’s what I like most about Salesforce; you can set yourself a goal and start learning today the things that can get you a job tomorrow.

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