From Math Teacher Dreams to Tech Leadership: Heidi Jordan's Journey Through Power Platform and Mentorship

Mark Smith: 0:06
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 South Dakota, the United States. She works at Avanade as a manager. She was first awarded her MVP in 2023. She actively participates in industry conferences, community days and user group speaking events, sharing her insights and connecting with fellow enthusiasts. She specializes in no-code design and is passionate about implementing custom solutions that satisfy both business and user needs. You can find links to her bio and social media, et cetera, in the show notes for this episode. As always, welcome to the show, Heidi.

Heidi Jordan: 1:07
Hello, thanks for having me, Mark. This is really awesome to be here.

Mark Smith: 1:11
Good to have you on the show. I always like to start off with getting some background. So with that in mind, food, family and fun what do they mean to you?

Heidi Jordan: 1:22
Well, the food. I'll start with that one. Food is actually like my therapy, not just in eating, but I love to cook. I love to watch food. Food Network is how I fall asleep at night. I love to watch cooking videos and shows and stuff. So that's kind of how I feel about food.

Heidi Jordan: 1:38
Fun and family those are two of the same thing. We like to have a lot of fun with my family. I'm very busy. I've got three boys 21, eight and five. So we do a lot of baseball games and football games, lots of sports and constantly running around to that stuff. We try and take most of the summer and head up to the lake on the weekends and do some boating and just kind of disconnect from the plugged in world that we have here in South Dakota. So love to spend time on the lake, love to watch sports all winter when it's snowing, you know, eight months out of the year in South Dakota. So it's kind of what we do for fun. Eight months of the year it snows Bit of exaggeration, but more like six. But yeah, we do get a ton of snow in the winter so we don't go too far.

Mark Smith: 2:20
Well, I'm the opposite. I never drop below negative five degrees Celsius. Sorry, I never drop growth positive five degrees Celsius. So I don't know what that's in Fahrenheit, but it means I don't even get a frost.

Heidi Jordan: 2:35
That seems pretty mild.

Mark Smith: 2:35
Consider yourself lucky, yeah, yeah. So snow is something I go to visit, to go skiing. I don't ever have it local. Very cool, very cool. Tell me about your story. How did you get into tech? How did you get to where you are today?

Heidi Jordan: 2:49
Yeah, I guess it all starts back in college. You know, I think it's funny that we go to college too. We have this idea of what we're going to be and then it completely goes a different direction, which is why I love hearing stories of MVPs and how they started. So I was pretty similar. I went to school to teach math. So I actually have a background in math and I was going to be a math teacher and that was my life plan.

Heidi Jordan: 3:11
And then I got out of school and applied at a bank because there was no teaching jobs and they saw my resume with the problem solving, the math skills and they're like we think you should be a business analyst. I said, okay, I don't know what that is, but I'll do it. So connecting that problem solving with skills with the issues that the bank was having, and particularly in the business intelligence department, that was just really a good fit for me to be a business analyst. So I think that that really gave me my solid background today in SharePoint. That's really where my strength lies, is in SharePoint. But you know, being a business analyst, you get to see the databases behind the scenes, the SQL you get to get into, the reporting you get to work with the business itself and gathering requirements and making that happen, you know, in the end product. So I think that was kind of my solid base there and did that for a while.

Heidi Jordan: 4:05
And then in 2016, when I still remember where I was when they announced the Power Platform and when Power Automate would flow back in the day like I still remember what I was doing exactly, I knew that I had to be a part of that. So my current job wasn't ready to go online, so I went somewhere else it was, and I really took a shift from the SharePoint on-prem world to the online world and jumped in, you know, both feet first, and ever since then that's all I've been doing is the online stuff. And then really that kind of got me connected to some other people in the community and that's really the second half of my story, which I'll pause there because that's kind of a long way through.

Mark Smith: 4:46
No, that's brilliant. That's brilliant. It's interesting. You talk about online, or you know, and previously being on-prem, and I find now, for the last three years, I don't think I've ever had an on-prem conversation anymore. It's only ever.

Heidi Jordan: 5:00
There are still people out there.

Mark Smith: 5:03
Oh, absolutely Absolutely. I think people are panicking that SharePoint end of life on-prem, isn't it 2026 or something like that? Yep, I think that's what they're saying, those last folks to come on. But also I'm seeing some massive sharepoint implementations up around you know, in the tens of millions of dollars in storage per year and online for really large enterprise organizations.

Heidi Jordan: 5:32
So it's still definitely a big workhorse right for many orgs absolutely, and it's still the back end to a whole lot of stuff that we use today and people don't quite understand that in some cases so tell us, you fell in love with the Power Platform, as did I.

Mark Smith: 5:47
It only got the name Power Platform, I think, in 2019. I think it got that name after a year, right? 2016 is when Power Apps came out, and Steven Siciliano with Flow. I wish I had not lost. I had a Flow shirt back in the day and I've kept my Power App original shirt, but I haven't got my Flow one for some reason. So tell me what happened then. So what was your journey once you had started building solutions using those new tools?

Heidi Jordan: 6:15
Sure, yeah, I remember telling my boss at the time that my new job title was going to be Flowmaster. I specifically remember that because I loved the name Flow. But yeah, once I started doing that it's a funny story when I started the next job to do the Power Platform, I was really excited about this and I got the job and they had a SharePoint online migration that they were trying to do. They're like we need to get to online so we can go use this power platform, et cetera. I was like, okay, sounds good, let's do the online migration first. And I started day one. I was ready to do the migration and then they tasked me with you need to remove our third party workflow system and move us to the power platform. And I was like I have never worked with power platform before. I know it's awesome and I know that I want to use it, but I don't know how to do it. So that's really how I got my roots in. It is. I had to learn from the trenches ground up.

Heidi Jordan: 7:04
This was at the time when there wasn't that much stuff out there. Honestly, it was so new and there were so many. The only things we had were videos and the people in the community that really embraced this and ran with it. There's no history books on the Power Platform. It came out in whatever year and that was it. So I had to kind of cultivate all my resources through videos and the community and learning and I built my first Power App. I tell everyone it took me nine months, because low code does not mean easy, it does not mean low complexity. You know, this still takes a lot, especially when you're doing it for the first time and then implementing it to an organization that has never heard of it either, and then implementing it to an organization that has never heard of it either. So that really got me going on my first application and then Flows and then really just kept doing those kinds of solutions, just rinse and repeat, for that same organization for many years.

Mark Smith: 7:52
What was that very first step? What was the design for?

Heidi Jordan: 7:57
The first application. Yeah, so there was a couple different use cases and the one was like a document review system, kind of like the policies, procedures and things that have to be reviewed on a yearly basis, and then also a project management tool. So they were using this third-party workflow for those two specific use cases and they wanted to remove that and replace it with the Power Platform.

Mark Smith: 8:23
Nice, nice, if you look across your career to date, what's kind of been the career highlights and this might go pre-Power Platform, but what have been? And when I think about career highlights, I'm talking about were there key people that mentored you? What were the inflection points that you, when you look back across your career, like I'm glad I made that decision that led to this, that type of thing.

Heidi Jordan: 8:49
I think you made a good point there. Excuse me, it's always the people that I remember. It's the people that made me feel recognized and enabled to reach for the stars here and do these things, and one of my very first managers really. She always made a point to send us to trainings, for example. You cannot replace that in-person training that you get when you go to these conferences, and so, whether I was ready or not, she would send me to these conferences because she knew that I would just go, immerse myself and learn and come back and bring all those things back to my daily life and just be rejuvenated. And so that, in particular, and just the way she trained me to answer to emails and to work with others in the organization, like with a positive manner, I think that those things are really what keeps me driving to the success I'm having today. So I would say for sure her.

Heidi Jordan: 9:42
And then the other token is a mentor. At that job I reached the top of. No one else understood SharePoint at the level I did. I had nowhere else to look up, and that's when you have to look outside. So that's when I reached out to my friend, liz Sunda at Microsoft and she was my mentor for a couple of years and really brought me to the next. You know, just kept me going down that technical path.

Mark Smith: 10:07
Nice. You mentioned email, lynn, and it's those little sparks of how you do something that can impact people. How you do something that can impact people when you say she taught you about how to you know because I think email is such an important part still of communication in business what did she teach you? What kind of stuck with you? What do you take or do now when you advise others around email management?

Heidi Jordan: 10:34
I think that honestly, in college I also took a technical writing class which at the time was awful, Like we had to do things like write a manual for the microwave, Like how do you know and think about all the steps of how you unbox the food and how you put it in them, like very technical, detailed that and being very thorough in emails and then also with the positive tone and you know, always step back and take a breath before you respond, Like I learned that. So never respond angry, and I always leave the end of my emails like please let me know if there's anything else I can do. Whether I mean it or not, I think it's a good salutation to close the email and just let the people know that you're still there and willing to help.

Mark Smith: 11:17
I like it Very cool, Very cool. Good advice. Tell me you obviously didn't stay at customer side. You made a transition to partner side. What was that transition for you?

Heidi Jordan: 11:31
Yeah, so after working a couple of local organizations, I went to consulting and the reason I'd switched is because I got sick of doing the same stuff every day. So you know, not every day, but it was kind of the same projects over and over again and I you can kind of feel yourself plateauing and your skills, your skill set, and you know, I think there's a quote of like, if you're comfortable, you're doing something wrong, like at your job, and that's how I was comfortable. So I wanted to get out there and be scared and start to do some new projects and that was really what drove me to move into the consulting world.

Mark Smith: 12:09
And how long have you been consulting now?

Heidi Jordan: 12:11
So I did a small firm for a couple of years, but then I've been with Avanade for two years now.

Mark Smith: 12:17
Nice, four years total-ish.

Mark Smith: 12:20
Okay, Can you give me some comparisons between partner side? Because a lot of people ask me, when it comes to career advancement, what are my options? And I say, well, there's really three different organization groups you can work for. You can work for Microsoft, ultimately go, you know, get a blue badge and work for the mothership. You can work partner side or you can work in customer. So you've been in those two. What's your? If you were to do a comparison pros and cons between working for customer, working for partner, what do they look like for you?

Heidi Jordan: 12:54
That's a great question.

Heidi Jordan: 12:56
I think that one of the hardest parts of consulting is coming into the organization and you have to learn the culture and how things work in very short time.

Heidi Jordan: 13:06
You know, if you come in as a client the client side you get a wonderful orientation program and culture and everyone knows your name. But when you come in as a consultant, you have to learn how it works fast, because it's your job to be successful and keep things moving, regardless of how they work. So you got to learn fast. But one of the plus sides is that you can work with those clients and then you can see how you can draw from your experience from other engagements. So you kind of learn how things work and then that really just builds your skill set. So you become this big conglomerate that has all this information and knowledge of how you can best help the client. And I think that's why they like working with consultants too in larger firms is that they've we're the people that have done this for everyone else and we've drawn our own lessons learned from that and um and are able to move them forward nice, nice, I like it.

Mark Smith: 13:57
Um, what's up on mine for you right now? Right, we're in, we're in uh 2024 there's. In the last few years, we've seen a lot of announcements and a lot of changes inside microsoft, around co-pilot, of course, so so, when you look at your runway for the next 12 months, the rest of this year, what does that look like for you?

Heidi Jordan: 14:20
That's another great question. So I do a lot of speaking events. I have a lot of that on tap this year. So particularly the Power Platform Conference is coming up. So I am working on that and just trying to immerse myself in the Power Platform. Still, copilot has taken over my life a little bit. I've been doing a lot of Copilot, m365 Copilot. I do see in my future a lot more of those engagements and doing that tech readiness. I think having a SharePoint background is key for this Copilot stuff because obviously Copilot can only leverage the things it has access to and SharePoint is one of those places it can access. So bringing my skills with the SharePoint background and merging that into some Copilot engagements will be in my future for sure, but trying to stay close to the Power Platform too. Like I mentioned, I do a lot of M365 these days and I kind of miss my Power Platform friends. So I'm trying to revisit Copilot Studio and some of those other things that are coming out.

Mark Smith: 15:21
So what are you speaking on in Vegas?

Heidi Jordan: 15:24
So I have two sessions. I'm actually doing a session with Eliza Benitez.

Mark Smith: 15:28
I think her name is Benitez. Yeah, she's from my country.

Heidi Jordan: 15:31
Yes, she is. So we are doing a co-session on the approvals kit for power automate and then how you can also leverage copilot studio to connect to that so that you can see, like, where your approvals are at and what process they're in. And then I have a second session on power automate and teams and the integrations between the two of those. It's a lot of Power Automate at this conference.

Mark Smith: 15:55
Nice, nice, nice. I might see you there. I'm also speaking. Tell me the MVP program. How did you end up finding out about it? Getting involved, how did you get nominated? Tell me a bit about that.

Heidi Jordan: 16:12
Sure. So I found out from I remember it was in 2019. I remember from my mentor, liz I have been attending the conferences and the SharePoint Saturdays and things for years. As I mentioned. My manager, you know, always encouraged me to go to those and I got to that point where I was ready to take what I know from all this stuff and share it with others. So my mentor said, like you should be a speaker. And I kind of laughed at her like no, it's not for me, but you know you gather all this stuff from other people. It's time to share with the world. So you know, I am gravitating towards those things that I'm scared of, and that was one of them.

Heidi Jordan: 16:54
So I started doing speaking events. I did my first one in January of 2020, I think, and then everything shut down. So I had just gotten this wonderful first event and I had a great crowd. It was like the highest attended of the session time. I was so excited and then everything shut down. So then I really kind of had a lull in there of like how do I continue to be a part of this and this community from home, on lockdown? So I also, I just continue doing speaking events.

Heidi Jordan: 17:24
I tried to do some virtual user groups. I think that my goal is really just to share what I've learned with others in hopes that someone can benefit from it, and that is one thing she told me, too, when I asked her about the MVP program. Goal is really just to share what I've learned with others in hopes that someone can benefit from it, and that is one thing she told me too, when I asked her about the MVP program. She said you don't seek it, it finds you, and you should be asking what can I do for the community, rather than how do I become an MVP? And that kind of resonated with me. So I just kept working, keep doing my sessions and work, and I started a blog just keep track of it. And then she ended up nominating me in 2022, I think, is when I got nominated.

Mark Smith: 18:02
Wow, awesome, awesome. That is so good and such a good story. Last question I have for you before we go before we go, what's been, if you were to point to one automation or one app or one solution that you have done? What's kind of like the story that you tell about once I built XYZ and it had this impact. What is that for you?

Heidi Jordan: 18:28
I think that it was definitely that first one that I built that document control solution and that one I do lots of variations with on sessions. And really the root of the story was how to take that out of InfoPath into Power Apps, because that is something that everyone should do. If they haven't, if they haven't looked into it, they should start looking at running an InfoPath from their environment. But, you know, learning I didn't know it still existed. I thought it was all gone. It's in the wild still. Yeah, there's still some out there. It is, yep, but I think that's one of them. But also, you know, building that form solution, also considering some of those.

Heidi Jordan: 19:07
Don't just build your solutions. You need to actually take a step back and work with the end users first. You know a lot of times they're doing these things, that they're just done forever, and that's why we've always done it. You know and you say, but why? And then you have these conversations about what is possible, not about the technology. You know this is what you're doing. Let me see. Do you need to do that? You know, and then you can start to connect those dots and then work that into the tool set that we have available as technicians.

Mark Smith: 19:38
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.