From Hairdresser to Power Platform Senior Analyst: Exploring Nathalie Leenders' Tech and Life Journey

Mark Smith: 0:37
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from the Netherlands. She's a Power Platform Senior Analyst. She was first awarded her MVP in 2023. The interesting thing and I'll get to tell us about it is her career change into her role. You can find links to her bio, social media etc. In the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, natalie. Thank you so much. Mark. Thanks for having me. Good to have you on the show. Tell me a bit about life outside of technology. What do you do when you're not working on Microsoft things? What do you do for food, family and fun?

Nathalie Leenders: 1:42
So for food, I've actually traveled quite a lot and I've been inspired I'm a travel spy to Thailand, to Turkey, to Greece, so I like to cook anything beyond or no Dutch food basically. So it's all big flavors and lots of herbs and spices and that is also a way for me to relax after a long day of work, and me and my husband actually do Argentine Tango Tango in the past three years for his ligament, his ACL, so we actually had to quit lessons and everything. But Argentine Tango is a big passion cooking, watching TV shows and taking care of my cat, who is currently taking a nap next to me.

Mark Smith: 2:35
Nice. How does Argentine Tango differ from? Where does Tango originate from?

Nathalie Leenders: 2:44
So Tango, I think, is French, but the Argentine Tango originated, I think it was early 1900s I hope my dance teacher isn't listening and correcting me but it was actually originated by slaves who wanted to have a way to have fun and enjoy and enjoy the music. So they actually started Argentine Tango after hours on the streets just having fun. And I got interested in it because of shows like Dancing with the Stars. But I thought Argentine Tango was this big, fleshy dance with big moves and legwork. And the first time I went to a lesson it was 1920s music. Everybody was 50 years older and I got like what am I doing here? And then 30 minutes later, an hour later, I was told it was awesome. People were so nice. I love music and we just started doing lessons from there.

Mark Smith: 3:49
Incredible, incredible. Now you're saying you've traveled a lot and I find a list of interesting countries and what you've said Where's your favorite country in the world?

Nathalie Leenders: 3:59
I would have to say Thailand, yeah, because it's so versatile. There's such a rich culture and food and people are really nice and you can do anything. You can go from a water park, you can go traditional, you can go to a jungle, to a pool, you can go to Bangkok, to a big town, so you can do everything.

Mark Smith: 4:27
I hear a lot of people, a lot of tech people, go there as an alternative lifestyle. They've got good internet and things like that and they can, you know, if they can get work, remote jobs, you can get all their lifestyle of Thailand, but you can still, you know, earn your salary or however you work back in the countries that you could, you know, as long as you have like a remote position. But I hear Thailand is one of those tech friendly countries in that respect.

Nathalie Leenders: 4:58
Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of locations with good internet and the cost of living there for us is lower. So if you have your own wage, then it's definitely doable to get like a really big house stable internet and everything.

Mark Smith: 5:17
How did you get into technology? What's your story of your journey to tech?

Nathalie Leenders: 5:23
Yeah, so that's actually kind of well, I think, interesting. So I became a hairdresser and when I turned 16, I went to hairdresser school and every time the computer broke down I could fix it. And during my hairdressing school I loved it, being creative and working with your hands and doing everything. But within a year I noticed I was. I started getting back and neck issues and so I've worked as a hairdresser for a year but then I had to quit. I can do one client to clients and then I'm done my shoulders, my neck, everything it just hurts too much. So I went to a school like open day for education and I found IT education there and I started becoming interested in that and doing it. And two and a half years, three years later I graduated and then I didn't continue with a higher level because they changed the course of the education from one year to two years by then and I wasn't looking forward to sorry my speech doing two more years at school. So then I just started working and I was working for an external company as a contractor. So I got hired by an accountancy agency, a law firm, a bank insurance company. I've worked for UNESCO, and then Kumorsk came along, a chemical company and they hired me internally about four years ago now. So that's kind of been my journey. So I started out doing IT support, incident management, change management, more the IT operations side of things. I started doing ITO courses and just interested in that, like MCSA exams and everything, and then gradually I started to do a share point designer, info buff, workflows, power BI. And then I just grew and somebody called me like hey, there's a position open on the automation team. Would you be interested? Like sure I am, and I figured it would just be Power BI and recording and a little bit of Power Apps. And it turned out 90% Power Apps, power Automates and a little bit of Power BI. But yeah, that's kind of been my whole journey, going from IT support, change management over to the Power Platform.

Mark Smith: 8:20
That's such an interesting journey and I love hearing of people changing their careers. You know into tech from something else and really doing well, and obviously you're doing great. Tell me about what are the typical use cases that you're building nowadays in Power Apps or Power Automate and Power BI? What are the business problems that you're solving at the moment?

Nathalie Leenders: 8:51
So we do all of our internal work. So it's for commerce internally, and we can do anything from a reservation system to a packaging specification system, holding a very specific product in information, or we have. Let me see what else can I talk about. Well, it's more internal to our men, so our manufacturing, engineering of the different departments, whichever application you would like, but it's also replacing legacy applications. So I had a bigger struggle in replacing a piece of legacy software that had a data back end from the 90s and I really had to ask an older friend of mine with experience of the past 30 years to actually get the data somewhere, which actually turned out to be me moving into SQL, doing a virtual table and resulting in me getting selected for the Vegas conference on the virtual table session.

Mark Smith: 10:01
So you're doing that conference later this year, I am. It's actually in 50 days. Yeah, I know it's getting. My boss just said to me the other day I'll listen, I'm going to sort of bow us to go there in November. And I said I don't think it's in November, mate. I said I think it's in October. No, it's October. Yeah, that's awesome. That's congratulations on getting to speak at that event. Do you prefer one technology over the other? When it comes to the power platform, are you more into power apps or more into power automate? Where do you you know? What do you naturally lean into and enjoy more? So?

Nathalie Leenders: 10:40
so I used to be a power BI person. Then I started working on a power platform, developing power apps using power automate, and I would say it kind of leaned towards power automate strangely enough, because there's just so many possibilities with it. And last week I did my power automate exam and I learned to hold up more about RPA, and so I'm kind of leaning towards that right now. But I would say that one that I have least experience with is virtual agent, but it's, you know, I mean the whole platform. I've started diving into PowerPages as well. I want to do a virtual agent for my demo for Vegas.

Mark Smith: 11:28
So it's a really interesting package. What you mentioned, you did your exam. That's the PL 500, right Exam that you've recently just done. How did you find that exam? Because it's one of the newest Power Platform exams out there. What was your you know feeling about the exam? What were your thoughts and hindsight on sitting it?

Nathalie Leenders: 11:49
I actually didn't find it too difficult. I anticipated that it would be really RPA heavy which it is, but it actually it's actually not that daunting of an exam. It's if you know. If you know how a cloud flow works and a desktop flow works and the difference between those and the possibilities, then you can easily take the exam. Of course, there's technical aspects and different scenarios, but it's I think it's a really good exam.

Mark Smith: 12:27
That's good feedback on it. Now you mentioned Power Virtual Agents, and so are you planning on building? Did you say a scenario out for the conference?

Nathalie Leenders: 12:38
Yes, so I don't want to spoil too much, but I want to do a demo on Virtual Agents how it can use a team's adaptive card in a fun, fun, exciting way.

Mark Smith: 12:50
Yes, I think PVA and adaptive cards inside Microsoft Teams allow you to address so many different business use cases and it creates a great interface for people to work with them. I mean, I call them mini apps, right, adaptive cards and the flexibility that it can give you. Tell me how did you become an MVP? What was that journey for you?

Nathalie Leenders: 13:15
Yes. So I went to the Power Platform Conference this past year in September I think it was and I was just in awe with all of the MVPs and all of the Microsofts there. And I took a leap of faith and I saw Jules Bernier-Davies-Bornert just sitting there with an empty chair next to them. So I was like wait a minute, can I sit here? And they were like yeah, of course, sure. So I started talking to them and getting to know about the community and sharing and the ability to do sessions yourself, and I started getting more feedback from them from Azure, azure, moog, farland and many other people and during my very first speaking engagement, ben Blanco was also there and he actually gave me the Power Apps in a day training a year earlier. So it kind of went full circle and I started talking to different people about how sessions work, how blogging works, how websites work and everything. And then around February, someone suggested to me like hey, I want to dominate you for MVP. I was like no, it's too early. I've only been in this world, in the community, for like four months. I mean, being an MVP is probably your process, or years even. And he nominated me anyway. And then on March for my work. I got promoted. I got selected for the biggest sessions. I was guest on the Power Platform Connect and then, in June I think, I got awarded MVP.

Mark Smith: 15:12
Wow, that's so good.

Nathalie Leenders: 15:14
Has that changed anything for you? I've been really fortunate to do some of the NDA meetings and getting the additional information and perks of being an MVP. But I've also found that it's so much that it's kind of a bit of a struggle to keep up and to actually use that information that's out there. But I'm just really passionate in helping other people and motivating them, for example with Microsoft exams. So I'm hoping, with me now being an MVP, that they can feel that they can reach out to me for assistance or guidance.

Mark Smith: 16:04
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time.