Building Community is Not for The Faint of Heart: A Conversation with Holly Firestone
Episode 34
Spotify | Apple | Google | Stitcher
Holly Firestone has built and run some of the largest enterprise communities and community programs in the world.
At Atlassian, she spent two years building their powerhouse User Group program. From there, Holly joined Salesforce where she spent five years leading and shaping the User Group Program, evolving the MVP Program, developing the Community Conferences Program, and for the final two years, also running the online Trailblazer Community. She is currently Head of Community at Venafi, where sheβs building a community for security professionals that are invested in the success and management of machine identities.
In this episode, Holly shares why she bet her career on community and how sheβs grown and progressed in the industry. She opens up about the ups and downs of her journey. Holly and Marsha take a deep dive into community and mental health. They explore some solutions to better support community professionals.
βThe best kind of support that you'll ever get is the support that you give yourself. You have to do that first before you can really do what you need to do in your role and in the community. As community professionals, we are constantly thinking about putting others first and pushing other people into the spotlight. But, to best serve your community, you have to serve yourself first.β
β Holly Firestone
