Ebony Beckwith Talks George Floyd's Impact & Equality | Success Anywhere | Salesforce

I want you to know that we will be sharing some exciting news and announcements today. Please make all of your purchasing decisions based on commercially available products. Gotta go, status quo. See you later, elevator.

Bye.

Bye.

Shirt and tie. So long, stubborn silos. Farewell frustrating commutes. And per my last email, goodbye, bloated inboxes. Gotta go status quo. Hello success. Hello change. Well, hello wellness Healthy again. Hello tech put to good use. Hello, single source of truth. Hello, new skills. New trails to blaze. Uniting teams in all new ways. Growth. It has been too long. Let's work from anywhere.

Come on.

Hello, pioneering innovation. New ways to work. Cross towns and and nation. More customer delight. Elation with success at every destination. And while we're talking change creation, how about equality that shows, not tells. Companies that share the wealth. A planet that sustains itself. It's up to businesses to help. Hello future. Hello trust. Let's succeed from anywhere. All of us. Please welcome Executive Vice President and Chief Philanthropy Officer Ebony Beckwith.

Well, hello everyone. How are you? Thank you so much for being here. Hello and welcome to Successful from Anywhere. And as you just heard from James, we are coming to you live from Los Angeles. But not just anywhere in Los Angeles. We are coming to you live from the beautiful, brand spanking new, gorgeous SOFI Stadium. How amazing is it here? It's pretty cool. I'm pretty sure it's not what the Rams and the Chargers had in mind for their stadium, but we're here. We have taken over and we are loving it. I'm so glad to be broadcasting from this beautiful location and. And really, I think that's what success from anywhere means. It means coming to you live safely from anywhere to share new ideas and new innovations. We are so excited to have you here with us today. We have a live studio audience. You are looking good. It's so exciting. It's been so long. Way too long. We also have an amazing online audience with us and I'm looking at you waving. Hello, everyone. It's so good to see you. But no matter how you're joining us today, we want you to know that we want this to be a very interactive keynote. So please be sure to use successanywhere on Twitter. Okay, let's dive in. I often say that one of the most important gifts you can give someone is your time. Because you can never get it back. It's so precious. And we know that you could be anywhere today or choose to do business with anyone, but you chose us and that makes us feel pretty special. So thank you to our customers. Thank you to our partners, thank you to our shareholders, and thank you to our trailblazers. And for those of you who are new, trailblazers are individuals who are learning new things, transforming their careers and paying it forward. Thank you all for being such beacons of hope and encouragement. And while I'm on that theme of hope and encouragement, really, our values have kept me hopeful over the past year. And I know that I love being a part of a values driven company, and I know many of you feel the exact same way. And at Salesforce, our values have always been incredibly important, but now more than ever, they've been our foundation. They've really grounded us, and they continue to be our North Star. And it all starts with trust. We know that you trust us and depend on us to keep your businesses up and running no matter what life throws at us. And we also built our company on customer success with the people, products and programs to make every single customer successful. And we're a tech company, so innovation has got to be a core value. And we've developed new solutions like Work.com, vaccine, Cloud, MuleSoft, Composer, and we're even bringing in Slack, which you'll hear a lot more about later. Now, equality is another one of our core values, and this past year, we've been focused on racial equality and justice, supporting the black community against racism, violence and hate. And over the last few weeks, this has been especially top of mind, culminating in yesterday's verdict. This was a defining moment, really offering closure and accountability for George Floyd and his loved ones. We know that this work really continues on, and we've committed to a lot of bold actions, but across our four pillars of people, purchasing, policy and philanthropy. So in addition to the steps we're taking to advocate for police reform, policy change and justice, we're also extremely intentional about investing in black futures. So building on the $30 million we've already donated to organizations focused on racial equality, Today we're announcing $1.5 million to Camelback Ventures in Echoing Green, two organizations who are really, really focused on promoting social entrepreneurs and breaking down barriers for them. We're also launching a new $2 million initiative called the Catalyst Fund. And that's where we're going to invest in organizations run by people of color and underrepresented groups, typically smaller organizations that get overlooked by traditional philanthropy. As Salesforce's chief philanthropy Officer, I cannot tell you how thrilled these announcements make me. And I know as a company, we're excited to watch these organizations bring their amazing visions to life. Very excited about all of that. So, as you can see, in addition to the amazing products and services, what we're building is so much bigger. It's the combination of our incredible product and our unwavering commitment to our values that have led us to be a leader in innovation, a leader in philanthropy, and a leader in culture. And this growth has helped propel us to be the number one CRM provider for the eighth year in a row, according to the idc. But this is not about Salesforce. This is actually about you. It's a reflection of you and your success. And what you've done is you've helped create something called the Salesforce economy, meaning that the work you've done will contribute 4.2 million million global jobs and $1.2 trillion in new business revenue by 2025. So what I love is that the faces you see here on the screen, these are not Salesforce employees. These are not stock images we pulled off the Internet. No, no. This is you. This is our customers, our partners, our trailblazers like Cassandra Yu and Russ Feldman, who lead community groups right here in LA focused on teaching other people Salesforce skills and other relevant tech skills. And fun fact. Not sure if all of you know this, but there are over 11 million with an M trailblazers worldwide in over 90 countries. So right now, I have the privilege of welcoming a trailblazer who was born and raised right here in LA and who continues to give back to his community. Please help me welcome up Madhani Hafte. Madhani, come on up. So good to have you here. You're my new bff, by the way. It's been great getting to know you. Wow, Madhani, thank you for being here. Tell us about your trailblazer journey and how Salesforce has been part of your path.

Oh, my heavens. It's unbelievable. You know, it's really great to be here at SoFi Stadium right here in my hometown of Los Angeles. I grew up literally just a couple of blocks from here, and to be here with all of you, with the entire Trailblazer community, is just so unbelievable and unimaginable. And for me, you know, it's just been a total dream come true. I just remember as a college graduate during the great recession with a degree in broadcast journalism, looking for a job like so many other college grads and volunteering at all these nonprofits, and then one day, you know, being lucky enough to find a job at a small nonprofit that was a Salesforce customer, and I was working as a fundraiser and also as a grant writer and that's when I started to dig in. That's when I started to learn more about Salesforce and everything. I got to go to my first Dreamforce that year and oh, man, it was just such a game changer. That's where I got to meet lots of incredible people. And from there, I really began to just dig in and just learn so much and grow with it. And that led me to where I am today, where now I have over 1200 trailhead badges.

That's amazing. Yeah, definitely give it up for that.

And then on top of that too, you know, I'm up to now 11 Salesforce certifications going on 12.

Wow.

But my most. The best part of this experience is that I not only found my dream job working as a salesforce consultant, but also at the same time, I get to help countless number of nonprofits, small businesses, and so much more realize their dreams. Like the black Voters matter project and black voters matter fund were really helping to change the world during this critical and monumental time.

I think it's pretty easy to see why I like this guy. So tell us, what advice do you have for people tuning in?

So, you know, I think back to what Leah McGowan here once said. She's one of my mentors and someone who has inspired me in so many ways. Imagine if one person can inspire another person and imagine if that other person can inspire many, many more. And that's what's really at the core of our community. It's all about learning, growing, inspiring, turning it around and passing it on to so many others. So for folks out there who are wondering, how do I get started? Where do I begin? I tell them, check out trailhead.com. find your local trailblazer community. I found mine. And I got to meet lots of incredible people. And we can't wait to meet you. We can't wait to see you Blaze youe trail.

That's amazing. Thank you so much. Before I let you go, I have a surprise for you. We have an award for people like you who did exactly what you just said. Learn new things, invest in themselves, invest in others, pay it forward to other people. And it is called the Golden Hoodie award. So we are excited to present you with your very own golden hoodie. Stand up. Try it on. See how it looks on you. We are very excited about this.

Oh, my goodness.

Thank you. A little technical assistance.

This is unreal. This is why. Oh, man.

This is like we have a little technical difficult. There we go. Innovation. Get into it some way. Somehow it looks good on you. Congratulations. Thank you so much, Madani. Thank you so much for being here. So, as you can see, we are in a whole new world, my friends and I love that. What trailblazers like Merani share in common is that they share this beginner's mind. And it's so important as we enter in a new world and a new way of working, where we have virtually virtual happy hours and socially distanced keynotes in stadiums, it's definitely a world that we could not have imagined before 2020. So we're going to spend the next few moments talking about this success from anywhere world. And as the name implies, it really starts with the ability to work from anywhere. But we know working from anywhere has actually been a challenge for some. In fact, I was recently reading a McKinsey report that said that women are 1.3 times more likely to consider leaving the workforce due to the pandemic. I see some heads nodding in the audience, and if that, we cannot let that happen, because if that happens, we will wipe away over a decade of gender equality progress. But I'm pleased to report that in response to this, so many companies are investing in employee wellness programs. In fact, 87% of employers are investing in wellness programs this year alone. So we can see that companies are accelerating their progress and moving forward. And guess what? Our industry is moving forward, too. And we're entering a new era. This tech industry is entering a new era. And we call this Cloud 3.0. Now, let me walk you back a little bit. Cloud 1.0, that was all about Amazon and Google and being able to buy and sell anything on the World wide web. Cloud 2.0 was about companies like Facebook and Apple and the rise of social and mobile capabilities. And now where we are today, Cloud 3.0 is about success from anywhere. It's being able to leverage technologies like Slack and Zoom to work, learn, engage safely from anywhere. And really the cornerstone of that is a reliance on trust. Because regardless of if you're a B2B or a B2C, customers are demanding transparency and trust. And we all heard the horror stories of companies who have not maintained trust. And the results have been very damaging for them. But on the other hand, we see that some companies have really stepped up and led with their values. Take Live Nation. Many of you probably know and love them. They throw some of the biggest concerts and some of the biggest stages worldwide. But when the pandemic hit, they knew that they needed to consider new audiences. They had to shift from venues and artists to new, younger consumers. Another great Example, Target, or as some of us know them, Target. They are committed to spending more than $2 billion with Black owned businesses by 2025 to drive their racial equality and justice efforts. So examples like these really show that adoption of a beginner's mind, adopting new business operating models and trying new things, really proving that business is the greatest platform for change and should serve all stakeholders. Now, what 2020 gave Salesforce an opportunity to do was pause, take a moment to reflect and ask ourselves, how can we be more relevant for all of our stakeholders? And you might wonder, who are our stakeholders? Well, the customer. Customers are our stakeholders, our partners are our stakeholders, our employees are our stakeholders, and the community is our stakeholder. But the biggest stakeholder of all by far, is the planet. And we want you to know that if you use Salesforce, you run your business on a net zero cloud and will adopt 100% renewable energy by 2022, which is absolutely amazing. Yes, give it up. So in this new world, there's definitely an imperative to be successful from anywhere and bring all of your stakeholders along. And we call this the success from anywhere imperative. And it's really that idea that in order to be successful, we have to focus on the five pillars that we just talked through. Working from anywhere, investing in digital transformation and trust, adopting new business operating models and thinking about all of our stakeholders. And that's really why we have the customer. 360.