Meet A ServiceTrader

Marie-Angela Della Pia, Senior Salesforce Administrator

Marie-Angela is part of the Growth Operations team.

She manages our CRM, Salesforce, so that it helps make our revenue teams job easier and meet our company goals.

Tell me about your role and what you do at ServiceTrade.

I’ve been at ServiceTrade since July 2021. I’m a Senior Salesforce Administrator. What that means is I work with our Revenue teams to define our business processes and then design and build scalable business solutions that are going to help those processes and the company’s goals.

What I love about what I do is I get to work across all of our Revenue teams, find out what challenges people are facing, work on what would make a person’s day better and easier, and help them capture data that the company needs. There’s that level of it, but then there’s also the systems wide-level. I’m also keeping in mind when I’m designing and customizing the platform, how does that help the company reach its goals. It makes me happy.

Marie-Angela, the 2022 Q3 Culture Award winner for embodying ServieTrade’s culture values.

What’s a typical day like?

I like to think of our techstack – all the integrations we have with Salesforce – as a boat or sailing vessel. There’s the journey, but there’s also the day-to-day stuff that has to happen to make sure the boat gets there. What I love about my role is that I get to take full ownership of that. This is my ship; I keep it afloat and do great things with it.

So a typical day includes some day-to-day things. I have a schedule of maintenance, making sure data is clean and things are running smoothly. There’s repairs that will happen. That doesn’t sound fun, but that’s actually one of my favorite things to do, kinda Sherlock Holmes what’s wrong.

Then there’s the big journey. That’s what I love. ServiceTrade has given me such a great opportunity to really focus on these big projects that have a lot of parts and span over a number of days, weeks, and months. That’s really where I get to work with our different Revenue teams and find out what their current challenges are, what they need, and what the requirements are of the project. Then, I combine that with the goals of the company and the data we need to capture for the business. Once I have that, then I translate all of it into best practices in the tech-stacks, research, design, build, test, pilot, and then deploy it to our sales team.

What brought you to ServiceTrade?

I spent the first six years of my career at Duke University where I ran programming, entrepreneurship, and space. I got to help my students and alumni access resources and mentorship to help them with their startup. I realized I wanted to partake in my own startup journey.

I made a career jump, going head first into Durham’s startup world and ended up in Revenue Operations, which is where I started to get my Salesforce certification. I had known about ServiceTrade for a while and had always admired it. I also knew people that worked here from previous experience, and I knew it was an A-team of people.

When the role came open last year, it was like my wish came true. I had known Shawn Mims (VP of Marketing) and Anna McMahon (VP of Inside Sales) previously and knew I wanted to work with him and alongside her. Those two drew me in. I don’t know if you always get that opportunity, so it feels like a dream come true.

There’s different levels of a startup. The work I do isn’t compatible with super early stages. What I liked about where ServiceTrade was when the role came open was the perfect stage for me. We still got the excitement and the agility of a startup, but now we have this awesome new challenge of scaling. That’s really where my role and my skill set is best utilized.

Which of the ServiceTrade culture values is your most important and why?

‘We collaborate.’ That’s my favorite because we actually walk-the-walk on that. It’s not just on the website. I really feel we do it. There’s that spirit of collaboration with everyone I work with. People want to work with you, and they’re open to change and to trying something new.

Collaboration can mean a lot of things. It can mean working well on a team – everyone bringing their great ideas and seeing how it all works. It can also mean people are willing to work together and try new things, which is awesome for someone in a role like mine because I’m rolling out changes to people’s workday. The collaboration we have is really nice because people bring a great attitude towards change, so if there is a problem, we’re all willing to work together.

I will give a shout out to ‘We are bold.’ It’s in my head a lot. I’ll think to myself: “be bold!” For example, sometimes during a meeting, we’re bouncing ideas and having that spirit of boldness gets me fired up and empowered to try outside the box, speak up, and suggest something.

What do you do outside of work?

My husband and I are members of the Triangle Curling Club in Durham. We love the sport and the community. We also love to go camping, hiking, and kayaking.

My husband and I meeting John Shuster and Tyler George, US curling Olympians!