Careers Foundation

Executive Team

The salesforce.com executive management team is made up of seasoned individuals who now seek to define salesforce.com as a world-class company delivering enterprise software as an online service.

The executive management team at salesforce.com is comprised of:

 

Marc Benioff
Chairman & CEO

Marc Benioff

Marc Benioff is chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. He founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand information management service that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Benioff is regarded as the leader of what he has termed "The End of Software," the now-proven belief that multitenant, cloud computing applications democratize information by delivering immediate benefits at reduced risks and costs.

Under Benioff's direction, salesforce.com has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a publicly traded company that is the leader in enterprise cloud computing. For its revolutionary approach, salesforce.com has received a Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award, been lauded as one of BusinessWeek’s Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, named No. 7 on The Wired 40, and selected for the past two years as a Top Ten Disrupter by Forbes. The product has won the Software & Information Industry Association Codie Award for Best CRM for the past six years, and the Codie Award for Best On-Demand Platform in 2007, as well as multiple “Editor’s Choice” designations from PC Magazine.

Benioff has been widely recognized for pioneering innovation with honors such as the San Francisco Business Times Executive of the Year, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the SDForum Visionary Award, and the Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year by the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. Additionally, he has been named No. 7 on the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT survey by eWEEK, one of the Top 10 Greatest IT Chief Executives by VNU, and among the top 10 most visionary CEOs in the technology industry by InternetNews.com.

He was appointed by President George W. Bush as the co-chairman of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee and served from 2003-2005, overseeing the publishing of critical reports on health care information technology, cybersecurity, and computational sciences. Benioff is also the author of three books, most recently the national best seller Behind the Cloud.

Throughout his career, Benioff has been committed to using information technology to produce positive social change. In 2000, he launched the Salesforce.com Foundation—now a multimillion-dollar global organization—which established the “1-1-1 model,” whereby the company contributes one percent of profits, one percent of equity, and one percent of employee hours back to the communities it serves. Acknowledging his commitment to building partnerships between business and society to improve the state of the world, the members of the World Economic Forum named Benioff as one of its Young Global Leaders. In 2007 the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy presented Benioff with the coveted Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Award and a year later welcomed Benioff to its distinguished board of directors. In 2008, for his thought and action leadership in corporate responsibility, CRO Magazine named Benioff CEO of the Year.

Prior to launching salesforce.com, Benioff, a 30-year veteran of the software industry, spent 13 years at Oracle Corporation from 1986-1999. In 1984, he worked as an assembly language programmer in Apple Computer’s Macintosh Division. He founded entertainment software company Liberty Software in 1979 when he was 15 years old. Benioff received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern California in 1986.

Some of the top awards Marc Benioff has received include:

  • San Francisco Business Times Executive of the Year, 2009
  • v3.co.uk Top Ten Technology Visionaries, 2009
  • InternetNews.com CEO Vision Awards, 2009
  • VNU Top Ten Greatest IT Chief Executives, 2008
  • CRO Magazine CEO of the Year, 2008
  • Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, 2007
  • eWEEK Top 100 Most Influential People in IT, 2007 (No. 7)
  • Business 2.0 50 People Who Matter Now, 2006 (No. 11)
  • Network World Top 50 Most Powerful People, 2006
  • NEA Outstanding Entrepreneur, 2006
  • DEMO World-Class Innovator Award, 2005
  • World Economic Forum's Global Leaders for Tomorrow, 2005
  • SDForum Visionary Award, 2004
  • USC Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year, 2004
  • Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Northern California, 2003
  • BusinessWeek ebiz 25
  • Fortune Top 10 Entrepreneurs to Watch, 2003
  • International Oracle Users Group True Friend of the User Community, 1995


Some of the top awards that salesforce.com has received, include:

  • CODIE Software & Information Industry Association Codie Award for Best CRM, six years in a row, 2002-2007; Codie Award for Best On-Demand Platform, 2007
  • The Wired 40, three years in a row: 2005-2007 (No. 7 in 2007)
  • Forbes Top Ten Disrupters, 2006-2007
  • Forbes 25 Fastest-growing Tech Companies, 2007 (No. 3)    
  • CRN Top 25 Tech Breakthroughs Of All Times, 2007 (SaaS )
  • BusinessWeek Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, 2006 (No. 79)
  • CRM Magazine Market Leader, enterprise CRM, midsize CRM, and sales force automation categories, 2006
  • Forbes Top Ten Disrupters of 2006 
  • Harvard Business School Association of Northern California, Entrepreneurial Company of the Year, 2005
  • InfoWorld Technology of the Year, 2003-2005
  • PC Magazine Editors’ Choice, 2002-2004, 2007
  • Gartner CRM Excellence Awards, 2003 
  • Fortune Cool Company, 2001


Some of the acknowledgements the Saleforce.com Foundation has received on behalf of its work in the community include:

  • Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Award, awarded to Marc Benioff, 2007
  • Ethisphere Magazine Top Ethical Companies, 2007
  • Business Ethics magazine: 100 Best Corporate Citizens, 2006 (No. 7)
  • KLD Social Index; salesforce.com added to the Domini Social Index 400, 2005
  • U.S. Department of Commerce Corporate Stewardship Award, 2003
  • Points of Light Foundation Award for Excellence in Corporate Community Service, 2003

 

Parker Harris
Executive Vice President, Technology

Parker Harris

Parker Harris founded salesforce.com along with Marc Benioff, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez in the spring of 1999. As executive vice president, Harris oversees the development of all software for salesforce.com.

Prior to founding salesforce.com, Harris developed Web application and salesforce automation expertise at Left Coast Software, a private consulting company he co-founded, as well as at Metropolis software, an early pioneer in field sales force automation subsequently acquired by Clarify.

He graduated from Middlebury College with a bachelor's degree in English literature.

 

George Hu
Executive Vice President, Marketing and Alliances

George Hu

George Hu leads the global marketing and alliances organizations at salesforce.com, responsible for branding and communications, marketing strategy, marketing programs, and alliances with service partners and independent software vendors.

Hu joined salesforce.com in 2002 and has served in a variety of management roles including vice president of product marketing, senior vice president of applications, executive vice president of products, and chief marketing officer.

Prior to joining salesforce.com, Hu held product management and strategic consulting roles at North Point Communications and Boston Consulting Group. He received a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard College and a master's degree in business administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

 

David Schellhase
Executive Vice President, Legal

David Schellhase

David Schellhase leads the legal, internal audit, technology audit, and public policy teams at salesforce.com. Schellhase joined salesforce.com in 2002 as general counsel.

Schellhase has practiced law in the technology industry for twenty years and served as general counsel of Vantive, Linuxcare, and Premenos Technology. He was also a member of the law department at Oracle and began his legal career as a corporate and securities lawyer with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison.

Schellhase is the author of The Corporate Law Department Handbook. Schellhase graduated from Cornell Law School and has a bachelor’s degree in European history from Columbia University.

 

Hilarie Koplow-McAdams
Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales

Hilarie Koplow-McAdams

Hilarie Koplow-McAdams leads salesforce.com’s worldwide sales teams, focusing on growing the company’s business globally.

A software sales veteran, Koplow-McAdams spent 18 years in a variety of sales and product marketing leadership roles at Oracle, where she rapidly expanded the direct sales organization and launched new product lines. As senior vice president of the direct sales channel, she drove the company’s rapid growth in both the technology and applications markets.

Prior to joining salesforce.com, Koplow-McAdams was vice president of direct sales and a member of the executive committee at Intuit, where her responsibilities included driving sales strategies and execution for Intuit’s small business solutions.

Koplow-McAdams has a Master’s degree in public policy from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor’s degree from Mills College.

 

Maria Martinez
Executive Vice President, Customers for Life

Maria Martinez

Maria Martinez heads the teams that are actively engaged with salesforce.com’s customers, focused on the company’s critically important value of customer success. Martinez’s teams are responsible for on-boarding, product usage, best practices, training, customer support, professional services, partner certification, and developing long-term relationships with salesforce.com customers.

Martinez has more than 30 years of experience in business and technology leadership roles. Prior to joining salesforce.com, Martinez managed Microsoft’s global services business, including professional services and customer support for all products. In her six-year tenure, Martinez led the business to outperform revenue targets and to significantly increase Microsoft’s customer satisfaction rating.

Prior to Microsoft, Martinez was president and CEO of Embrace Networks. She has also held senior leadership roles at Motorola and AT&T.

Martinez has a Master’s degree in computer engineering from Ohio State University and a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Puerto Rico.

 

Graham Smith
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Graham Smith

Graham Smith brings over 20 years of finance experience in the software industry to salesforce.com. As CFO, Smith is a member of the company’s executive committee reporting directly to Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff.

Before joining salesforce.com in December 2007, Smith served as CFO of Advent Software, one of the leading providers of software and services to the investment management industry. Prior to Advent, Smith was CFO of Vitria Technology, an enterprise application integration software company. Prior to Vitria, Smith served as CFO for Nuance Communications, a voice-recognition software company, where he led the company through both private and public financings. Earlier in his career, Smith spent 11 years at Oracle in a variety of senior finance roles, lastly as vice president of finance for worldwide operations.

Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and politics from Bristol University in England and qualified as a chartered accountant in England and Wales.

 

Jim Steele
Chief Customer Officer

Jim Steele

Jim Steele serves as our chief customer officer. He is charged with advancing the company's winning cloud computing strategy, customer success, and growing the customer base.

Steele joined salesforce.com in October 2002 from Ariba, where he served as executive vice president of worldwide sales.

Steele brings over 25 years of technology sales and executive management experience to his new role at salesforce.com. Previously, he served in a variety of executive roles at IBM. Most recently, Steele was vice president of the North America western area, where he was responsible for over $9 billion in hardware, software, and services sales of a 10,000 employee organization. His prior positions at IBM include nearly four years in Tokyo as vice president of systems sales as well as general manager of telecommunications in Asia Pacific where he led IBM to record revenue and market share growth.

Steele holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Bucknell University.

 

Polly Sumner
Chief Adoption Officer

Polly Sumner

As chief adoption officer, Polly Sumner is responsible for customer success and ensuring that each and every customer gets maximum value from our products and services.

Sumner’s move to salesforce.com in 2008 followed a 20-year career in executive management in the technology industry. Most recently, Sumner was president of global services at Telcordia. Sumner also served as president and CEO of Alphablox, where she grew the company from $5 million to $25 million in two years.

Sumner also held several different positions at Oracle from 1987 to 1999, including vice president and senior vice president roles in sales and alliances. Earlier in her 30-year technology career, Sumner worked at McDonnell Douglas and IBM.

Sumner holds a bachelor's degree in history and political science from Northern Arizona University and a master's degree from the American Graduate School of International Management.

 

Frank van Veenendaal
President, Worldwide Sales and Services

Frank van Veenendaal

As president of worldwide sales and services at salesforce.com, van Veenedaal leads the global sales, customer support, and consulting services organizations. He is responsible for growing the company’s global customer base and driving adoption and retention to create customers for life.

van Veenendaal joined salesforce.com in August of 2001 and has served in a variety of executive management roles including president of global corporate sales, senior vice president of sales and services, and executive vice president of corporate sales and services. In these capacities he has been instrumental in the growth and evolution of the sales organization through the creation of innovative new compensation plans, pipeline development, sales segmentation, and growth strategies.

van Veenendaal brings over 25 years of technology sales and executive management experience to his roles at salesforce.com. Previously, he served as senior vice president of Actuate, a enterprise reporting and performance management software company. Prior to joining Actuate, he spent six years with Interleaf, where he served in various roles including that of regional director of sales. In the early stages of his career, van Veenendaal held various sales and sales management positions for high-tech companies such as Integrated Solutions, Pyramid, and Harris Corporation.

van Veenendaal holds bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.