If you come away from this post knowing one thing about Morgan Foley, it’s this: She doesn’t back down from a challenge.
In 2017, Morgan had already distinguished herself as a systems consultant, helping her clients leverage Salesforce to its fullest to meet their goals. One day, the head of her company’s Salesforce certification training program approached her with a question: Would she be interested in pursuing Salesforce’s highest certification, Certified Technical Architect (CTA)?
“I’d never been an architect on a Salesforce project, so I immediately said, ‘I can’t do that,’” Morgan says.
The training lead said that others in the company’s leadership agreed: People in her role couldn’t achieve the CTA. “But I think you can,” he added.
“So I said, ‘I’m in,’” Morgan recalls, “And somewhat out of spite, I started pursuing that certification.”
A few months later, she became just the seventh woman in the world to earn the CTA.
‘DCS felt right for me’
That achievement is just one highlight along Morgan’s career journey that, in 2019, led her to DCS.
After graduating from Virginia Tech with a degree in Management Science and Information Technology, she started her career working with smaller systems consulting companies. This allowed her to gain a breadth of skills in web development, data warehousing, program management, delivery assurance, and account management.
Eventually, she joined a larger tech consultancy but found herself engaged more in business development than the technical work she truly enjoyed. She decided she wanted to return to a smaller environment where she could focus on more direct client work and feel like she had more of an impact on the organization.
Coincidentally, that’s when DCS Co-Founder and Managing Director Ben Hatten sent her a LinkedIn message asking if she’d be interested in learning more about working with DCS.
“Ben reached out at the right time, on the right day, where I was open to this particular outreach,” Morgan says. “We started having conversations, and something about DCS felt right for me.”
After joining the company, she realized that many of her colleagues had followed a similar career trajectory to her own. They’d transitioned from big firms to DCS’s smaller setting, and they were committed to creating a different consulting model for their clients—and themselves.
“We’re not going to assume everyone’s going to work 70 hours a week,” Morgan says. “We really try to balance client needs, DCS needs, and our people’s needs.”
Making clients’ ‘eyes light up’
Her favorite projects are those where she and her team can help their clients realize how much time they can save and headaches they can avoid with just a few tweaks to their Salesforce architecture. Instead of entering the same information in seven different places, for example, Morgan’s team can make it possible for clients to import data once and feel confident it’ll be routed to all the right places.
“Their eyes light up because sometimes they’re not even aware that a solution is possible, from a feasibility or budget perspective,” Morgan says.
“Clients have preconceived notions about the project or the problem and how hard or expensive it will be to solve,” she continues. “Because we’re going in there with fresh eyes, and we may have seen something similar somewhere else, we can break their problem down into something that’s more manageable.”
The promises and perils of AI are other challenges Morgan sees clients grappling with. With so much pressure to incorporate the technology and so many vendors promising solutions, companies have to determine which options will actually have an impact on their business and which won’t—and they have to do it fast.
“Right now, everyone is saying ‘We need to leverage AI,’ but there’s a lot of work to do to figure out how to effectively leverage it,” Morgan says. “I think DCS can be in a position to help guide clients on how best to make the investment to have AI as part of their Salesforce-connected systems.”
Giving back to Arlington communities
Morgan enjoys serving as a Salesforce wayfinder for organizations outside office hours, too. Through her recent participation in the Leadership Center of Arlington’s Leadership Summit, she made connections with for-profit and non-profit leaders around Arlington, Va., where DCS is headquartered. She recalls a fellow member of the 2024 Leadership Summit cohort talking with her about the challenges of working with Salesforce in her two-person non-profit. Morgan immediately offered to help show her how to create reports.
Although Morgan’s enrollment in the Leadership Center of Arlington was first and foremost a professional development opportunity, her time in the program also had personal meaning.
Despite being an Arlington resident for almost 25 years, Morgan admits she wasn’t deeply informed about how the county government works and the services that it offers—things that make the county such a great place to live. She also appreciated how the Leadership Summit helped her better understand the challenges that under-resourced areas of Arlington County are facing. Arlington is one of the nation’s wealthiest counties, but many of its residents are struggling to just get by. The gap between the haves and have-nots is growing in Arlington, not shrinking, and learning about it has inspired Morgan to get more involved.
“After hearing some of the challenges related to underrepresented communities, it brings it to the forefront of my mind, even when we’re making decisions at DCS about how we are doing things,” Morgan says. “What charities do we support? What volunteer activities do we decide to do? That’s one major takeaway I got out of [the Leadership Center of Arlington].”
Off the clock…
When Morgan wants to truly detach from the Salesforce ecosystem, she enjoys going camping with her partner and listening to live music. She dreams of combining both loves by renting an RV, traveling across the country, and visiting famous music venues along the way (destinations already on the shortlist: The Gorge in Washington and Red Rocks in Colorado).
Closer to home, Morgan can often be found on a flag football field. She’s played for her co-ed team, Victorious Secret, for nearly a decade. At 48, she’s also one of its oldest members.
“There’s a guy on my team who’s probably 10 years younger than I am who keeps saying, ‘I can’t wait for you to retire, because then I can,’” she says.
That sounds like a challenge. Knowing Morgan’s feelings about challenges, that teammate may, unfortunately, be waiting to retire for a long time.
Overall
Morgan Foley’s story is a testament to the power of determination, collaboration, and a commitment to making a meaningful impact. Her journey reflects the values we uphold at Dupont Circle Solutions: challenging the status quo, delivering innovative Salesforce solutions, and fostering a community of passionate professionals who truly care about their clients and their communities.
If you’re ready to take your Salesforce implementation to the next level with a team that doesn’t back down from challenges, reach out to Dupont Circle Solutions. Let’s talk about how we can help you achieve your goals and make the most of your Salesforce investment.