Confidence and a winning attitude in dynamic Dutch city

Eva Heffernan says Amsterdam is a dynamic and family-friendly place to work and to raise a family.The Glasnevin native is director for sales strategy and operations for cloud-computing firm Salesforce. She is responsible for northern European markets including the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden. She works with the senior sales leadership to develop and execute go-to-market strategies.

Heffernan studied for her BA including German at University College Dublin, during which time she completed an Erasmus year at the University of Kassel in Germany. From there she went to Universität Wien (Vienna) under a scholarship provided by the Austrian government. Then she studied business coaching at Coach Institute of Ireland and got a subsequent diploma in psychotherapy at Dublin Business School.

Heffernan built a career in the tech sector in Dublin, working at Siemens, Oracle and Microsoft (where she was on the Top Talent programme) before moving to Salesforce in Amsterdam in March 2014. Heffernan credits her parents for instilling in her a positive, can-do attitude, something that she and her husband William are now trying to pass on to their two daughters.

“My parents taught us that we are winners and gave us the confidence to be successful both at home and abroad,” Heffernan says. “I try to give that message to my kids. I am so proud of the way they have adapted to their new life. In fact, my youngest has better Dutch than English and that stings a bit.”

After the birth of her second child, she reassessed her work to make “deliberate choices about the next stage” of her life. “I worked with an executive coach at Clearbird and started to capture what excited me in my working day and what experiences I wanted more of,” she says. “At the same time, my husband and I started to consider the possibility of moving countries. He was travelling a lot with work and we wanted to look at a more central location in Europe.”

Amsterdam was an obvious choice for them as Heffernan has two sisters living there and her husband's family is a couple of hours away in Antwerp. He secured an internal move at the time with Accenture and Heffernan used her network to secure what she describes as her "dream job" with Salesforce.

“Salesforce is a fast-growing, customer-focused company, so it is a very positive and focused environment,” she says.

While she misses home, and close family in particular, she visits often – travelling back to Dublin to the Salesforce hub in Sandyford.

“It is great to see so many sales people kick off their careers in Dublin and transform their careers to become top performers in the region,” says Heffernan, who has won various accolades throughout her career. She now leads the Salesforce women’s network for the region.

“Part of the challenge facing Salesforce, and other tech companies, is having access to an adequate pool of diverse tech talent. To help keep the pipeline filled, the company supports organisations that strive to promote technology education and careers, such as CoderDojo,” she says. “We have a big focus on inspiring young women into Stem studies and work with organisations such as the Stemettes to help give young women insight into the industry.” Heffernan is also a member of GirlsinTech.

For her, having her sisters Vivienne and Mary just a cycle away has aided settling in to the city. They meet often as well as for occasions such as Easter and the Six Nations rugby events.

The family’s first year was spent settling the children into creche and school but they have begun to branch out more, developing friendships and travelling by car for holidays in Europe. Despite childcare and rents being expensive in the city, Heffernan says it is balanced out by the excellent healthcare (for which they pay a monthly premium that is wage-dependant), a strong jobs market, a good attitude to those in the workplace with families and plenty of family-friendly amenities.

“The hardest part of leaving Ireland was saying goodbye to family and this was the first big decision I made for my little nuclear family,” she says. “My little girls won’t grow up day by day with their cousins, but when we are out cycling as a family in Amsterdam, I see we are giving them a great gift, too.”