In this session, Monique Sereneo of Rainbow Railroad and Ryan Ovas of Polar Labs will walk through how Rainbow Railroad extended its Salesforce infrastructure with a custom data lake and self-serve client portal to support their human rights work.

Rainbow Railroad is a Toronto-based international human rights organization that supports LGBTQI+ people facing state-enabled violence and persecution. Managing over 20,000 cases annually, Salesforce serves as their core operational backbone for case management, program coordination, fundraising, and impact measurement.

When Rainbow Railroad needed a way for clients to securely access their own case information, however, native Salesforce portal solutions weren't designed to support the level of cost-efficiency, flexibility, and long-term scalability required to extend into a broader data ecosystem.

You'll see how they approached secure client access, why they chose a custom data lake and portal architecture, and the tradeoffs involved. The session covers the end-to-end solution — from system design to real-world implementation — along with lessons learned and what they'd do differently.

Agenda:

• 5:00pm: Check-in (please do not arrive before 5pm as Level 5 will not be open)

• 5:30pm: Presentation Starts

• 6:15pm: Snacks + networking

• 6:45pm: More networking at a local pub