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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Monday that Slack has named Denise Dresser as its next chief executive to succeed current CEO Lidiane Jones, who is leaving at the end of the year.
Dresser has worked for Salesforce for 12 years. She is currently president of accelerated industries at Salesforce.
"Denise is an incredible business leader and champion of Salesforce customer success and innovation who's deeply committed to our values and our customers," Benioff tweeted.
Jones will start as CEO of Bumble Inc. on January 2. The dating app company announced last week that it had tapped Jones to lead as founding CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd steps down.
Jones has led Slack for less than a year. Salesforce, which acquired Slack in 2021, tapped Jones to lead the company at the end of last year, following founding CEO Stewart Butterfield's announcement that he was leaving the company. Jones started in January.
Dresser will become Slack's third CEO in roughly one year. Butterfield's exit in 2022 was one of the first in a series of Salesforce executive departures that began at Salesforce late last year, some of them after only a brief period of time in their roles.
In the last year, co-CEO Bret Taylor, Tableau CEO Mark Nelson, chief revenue officer Gavin Patterson, and chief business officer Ebony Beckwith have all left the company. Salesforce said in August that chief people officer Brent Hyder would leave the company to "pursue a new opportunity." In September, chief trust officer Vikram Rao departed after 18 months in his role.
Salesforce recently began a hiring campaign after months of layoffs and budget cuts. Benioff has said he wants to hire 3,000 people as the company ramps up its generative AI efforts. Benioff has indeed brought back several "boomerangs,"or employees who left Salesforce on their own and decided to come back, in the last several months. One of them is former Oracle CMO Ariel Kelman, who previously left Salesforce in 2011.
Earlier this year, Salesforce cut 10% of its workforce — close to 8,000 people — as part of a restructuring plan meant to satisfy activist investors pressuring the company to up its profit margins.
A group of activist investors, including Elliott Management and Starboard Value, began circling Salesforce last year, calling for the company to dramatically cut costs and focus on profit over growth, a departure from Benioff's leadership style since starting the company over 20 years ago.
Since the layoffs, Salesforce has focused intensely on employee productivity and performance, which rank-and-file employees have said were not as scrutinized in the past.
To contact Ellen Thomas with insight or information about Slack or Salesforce, reach out at ethomas@insider.com or call/text (646) 847-9416 using the encrypted-messaging app Signal.
