Shysta Goyal
Shysta Goyal began volunteering for SCORES from her home in Virginia during the first summer of the Covid pandemic. At the time, SCORES was looking for a volunteer consultant to customize the organization’s use of the Salesforce data management platform, with a focus on fundraising and development operations.
How did you first get involved with SCORES?
That’s an interesting story. My husband got a job with Salesforce, and when we got married, I moved with him to the US from India. At the time, I was working in the human resources department of a renowned hospital in New Delhi.
I’m very career-oriented and have always wanted to use my education to do something productive with my time. But getting married and moving changed things drastically, and when I moved to the US, I no longer had the authorization to work. I became a homemaker and not by choice.
My husband suggested I explore Salesforce Trailhead, a free online learning platform that teaches beginner and intermediate developers how to code in the Salesforce ecosystem. I don’t come from an IT background, but I was motivated to try. You learn through “trails” and earn badges and certifications as you move through different pathways and modules.
As I progressed, I realized I wanted to get some hands-on experience. As I couldn’t legally work, I decided to try to volunteer somewhere. It was July 2020 and everything had gone virtual. On Volunteer Match, I found a request for a Salesforce consultant from America SCORES, which uses the Salesforce platform to manage its data. Angela Bailey, America SCORES Bay Area Director of Corporate and Community Engagement, posted the listing. And even though I hardly had any experience, Angela accepted my application. I’m so grateful she gave me this opportunity as it’s been a wonderful experience for both of us. We’ve become real friends.
Are you more of a soccer player or a poet?
Neither one! I was more of a rollerskater, and India is more about playing cricket than anything else. But my eldest niece likes playing soccer and my mom writes beautiful poetry. She can write about anything. She earned a master’s degree in Hindi, which is the national language of India. Give her a topic about anything, and she’ll compose a beautiful poem in just minutes to share with you. When I told her about America SCORES, she was so excited to know something like this exists. She said, “I wish it was there when I was young.”
What was it about SCORES that appealed to you?
I appreciate how America SCORES supports the physical and mental health of kids at a time when so many are engrossed in watching things on their TVs, tablets, and phones. Kids don’t go outside as much as they used to!
SCORES gives kids more ways to go out and play, be creative, and put their talents to use. It’s giving them all kinds of opportunities to express themselves. And I will always have a soft spot in my heart for SCORES. It was my first volunteering position and Anglea believed in me when I was feeling skeptical about myself.
How have you found life in the US different from your life in India?
Life here really makes you an independent person. When I was growing up in India we had house help. I’d never even get a glass of water by myself. It was very privileged, but it was the culture I grew up in and what I knew. But when I came to the US, I learned you do almost everything by yourself. You have to clean the dishes by yourself. You have to cook by yourself. You mow the lawn and shovel the snow and clean your house and maintain your garden. I like this approach so much because these are basic survival skills. We need them! And there’s less gender bias and defined gender roles here because everybody’s supposed to do everything. And in the US, kids are taught from an early age to be independent and often start working as teenagers, getting summer jobs, for example. In India, that’s very unusual.
Life has changed dramatically for you since you first moved from India. Since then, you’ve moved to Canada and back, started working legally for a tech company, and settled in the Virginia suburbs. How did that all happen?
During the pandemic, Salesforce opened up an office in Canada and offered my husband the opportunity to work there. We both were interested in exploring Canada and I could get a work authorization there. So we moved to Toronto and I started working for TripSpark. Then my husband got a federal project here in the US, so we had to move back. But TripSpark supported my decision to work from Virginia where we now live, so it’s all working out!
Check out more Five Questions With interviews from the SCORES community here.