Colin Ong-Dean has served the nonprofit sector for a long time by providing Salesforce support and consulting to various organizations. He particularly enjoys finding ways to clearly communicate solutions to problems they are facing so they can continue fulfilling their missions without interruption.

Colin has a broad range of work experience preceding becoming a Salesforce consultant; including working as a proposal specialist for a higher education software consulting firm, freelance editor and research proposal consultant, education researcher, and foundation program officer.

His focus on nonprofits is rooted in a long-standing desire to understand and address social inequality. Colin earned a PhD in sociology at the University of California San Diego, where he studied the factors underlying parents’ ability to advocate for their children in the special education system. In 2018, Colin began volunteering as a court appointed special advocate (CASA), which involves advocating for children in the foster care system.

Fun Fact: When he was 11 years old, Colin learned to program in BASIC on a Commodore VIC-20, which had 5K of RAM. Inspired by the movie War Games, he developed a plan to create an AI program that could learn to use English. He ultimately concluded that this was not a feasible project.