Last summer, I had been at Salesforce about a year and a half, and there were a few things on my mind about my organization and team. Our executive leadership always appeared accessible, so I thought why not send a Slack message to Marc Benioff ? After I sent it, I was petrified! Was I being presumptuous? Why would the CEO of this tech giant even take me seriously? To my sweet surprise two days later, Marc responded. He said Trust is our #1 value and he wanted to make sure I was being heard. He encouraged me to reach out to his co-founder Parker Harris who was leading the Security organization for the summer while our Chief Trust Officer took a well-deserved two-month break.
Cue the horror and imposter syndrome! Things were getting real. I bit the bullet and contacted Parker, who was already doing double-duty as CTO and acting CTrO, fully confident that he would deem me a pesky annoyance in his busy schedule. But not even 3 hours later, Parker got back to me. He listened with kindness and zero judgment. Gave me his perspective. Encouraged me to understand how he saw things. And I was bowled over.
You know when they say down-to-earth and salt-of-the-earth? Parker Harris is the very personification of those idioms. Salesforce wouldn't be Salesforce without Marc and Parker. And I am glad for it!!
Here's to amazing things for the next 25 years at Salesforce and to the next bright chapter for Slack with Parker as its technology chief! ✨️ 💖
Created, launched, and scaled the world’s most used products | Keynote Speaker | Innovator of Enterprise Mobile and SaaS Platforms in eCommerce, QSR, FinTech, Hospitality, Data, and Supply Chain
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