Salesforce has a long history of acknowledging and identifying its champions amongst practitioners and consultants. There is a special culture in the Salesforce community with its cartoon mascots and theme of blazing trails. If you’ve worked in the Salesforce ecosystem, you’ve no doubt heard about the “Ohana” (a Hawaiian word roughly translated to family), which can be described as the commitment to community amongst Salesforce employees, partners, and customers. In the spirit of this culture and to highlight “Trailblazers” who are doing more with emerging Salesforce products, they introduced the Champions program in 2018.
SpringML had three team members join the program in 2019 and is adding more in 2020. As the leader of our Salesforce delivery team, I could not be more proud of the hard work that these Champions do, along with their commitment to sharing their knowledge and passion with the Salesforce community.
Analytics Champions
Nicolai Johnson-Borelli
Data Analyst
Nicolai joined SpringML at the beginning of 2017, coming to us as an experienced Salesforce consultant who was an early enthusiast for “Wave” (the old product name for Einstein Analytics). Nico leads a Meetup group in his home city of Minneapolis and has presented at several sessions at Dreamforce and other events. He was inducted in the inaugural class of Analytics Champions in 2019.
Fun Facts: Nicolai was born in Germany, is an avid distance runner, and proposed and got married to his wife on the football pitch.
Robert Anderson
Architect
Robert came to SpringML as an experienced data warehouse and business intelligence consultant at the beginning of 2017. He quickly became acclimated to Einstein Analytics and has emerged as a key leader in our team. He is also a multi-time Dreamforce speaker and consistently helps our customers advance their capabilities with Einstein Analytics. Robert joins the Analytics Champions program this year.
Fun Facts: Robert is our resident board game expert, and has recently taken up gardening during the quarantine. He also enjoys camping, hiking, biking with his family, and foreign films.
Gene James
Data Analyst
Gene was a team member at a Salesforce ISV Partner and certified Admin before coming to SpringML in 2018. He is now an Einstein Analytics veteran having helped about a dozen customers deploy and enable insights and dashboards. Gene has been active in the Indianapolis Salesforce community presenting at the local user group and has been a SpringML brand ambassador to the Salesforce Pathfinder program. Gene is also a new inductee to the Analytics Champions program this year.
Fun Facts: Gene has a cat named Puppy that he carries in a Pokeball backpack, played collegiate soccer, and is a breakfast food enthusiast.
Matt Wittlief
VP Salesforce Delivery
Yours truly is also humbled and honored to be added to the Analytics Champions program this year. I joined SpringML in late 2015 coming with years of experience in analytics and general business leadership. I have seen this product grow and mature over several years and been involved with countless projects and customers.
Fun Facts: Matt used to play in a punk rock band, has run for political office and loves playing trivia games. He also usually doesn’t refer to himself in the third person.
Einstein Champions
Brachston Grubbs
Data Analyst
Brachston joined SpringML in early 2019 after serving as an analytics and data consultant prior to that. He has been a pioneer in using newer Salesforce Einstein features like Next Best Action and Case Classification and uses his wide array of skills to help customers and communities to better understand and utilize AI in their business processes. Brachston was in the inaugural Einstein Champions class last year.
Fun Facts: Brachston has a nuclear engineering degree, has been a mechanic on a racing team and has a strict policy of naming his dogs after famous scientists such as Einstein and Rutherford.
Ram Palanki
Data Analyst
Ram is a long-time SpringML veteran having joined our team in early 2016. He’s been a part of numerous Einstein Analytics projects and began working with other Einstein capabilities as they emerged. He has done work with Einstein Vision and other AI/ML features. Ram has also been a Dreamforce speaker multiple times; he was inducted into the first class of Einstein Champions last year.
Fun Facts: Ram has fear of heights but has made it to Angels Landing (Zion), Mt. Katahdin (Maine), and Hava-supai (Havasu, AZ). Some of these kept him overnight in the wilderness for over 20 hours (more like getting lost in darkness)!