Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and welcome. My name is Marcelino Ford-Livene, and I'm the Managing Director and Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion at RBC Capital Markets. It is my pleasure today to welcome to the conference Lori Castillo Martinez, Executive Vice President and Chief Equality Officer at Salesforce. Lori and I will speak about the power of innovation and how it can drive diversity and inclusion in the workplace and beyond. In her current role at Salesforce, Lori leads global equality efforts, including equality strategy and programs. Previously, Lori served as the Head of Global Employee Relations and Equality at Salesforce, a role uniquely designed as a way to accelerate and integrate people and quality initiatives. In this capacity, she focused on performance and employee relations management across the globe as well as driving equality initiatives at the company. Under her leadership, the company has continued to increase representation and create a more inclusive culture through equity-focused processes and programs. Equality is a core value at Salesforce, and they strive to create a workplace that reflects the diverse communities around them and where everyone feels seen, heard, valued and empowered to succeed. In 2019, the company set a goal to have 50% of their U.S.-based employees come from underrepresented groups by 2023. In 2020, they included additional public representation goals to continue to accelerate this work. Welcome, Lori, and thank you for joining us this afternoon at the conference.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure and privilege to be here.

Lori, you've had a significant career in the tech sector. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about your background and how your career journey ultimately led you to be the Chief Equality Officer at Salesforce.

Thanks for the question. So it's interesting. I don't know 10 years ago, if you would have asked me what I end up in the seat, if I would have said this is the place that I would be. So I feel a little like the stars have aligned to bring me to where I am. I spent much of my career in global legal and compliance functions, business operations roles. I've lived in Europe and also here in the Bay Area currently. And the tech sector has always been part of my background but also a part of the health care industry as well. And so when I think about that thread that goes through my career, it really is in a couple of different places. One is related to systems, processes and culture, and the other is really trying to have impact from a systemic perspective. And when I made the move to Salesforce in 2018, I felt like this was a place where I could make a difference, starting in employee relations function. I could really see what was happening in the organization, and it gave me a great springboard to figure out how do we start to figure out where the experiences of our employees are coming together with our goals and values from an equality perspective. And it was a real opportunity to change people's individual experiences. And I just jumped right in with 2 feet.

That's great. It sounds like you have your finger on the pulse of what's going on by starting in employee relations. That makes sense. I was wondering if you could speak about your current role and kind of what you're focused on these days.

Yes. So today, we're really thinking about accelerating representation. How do we think about where we go, not just from a hiring perspective but also as it relates to experience. When we think about representation and our value of equality, it's really both of those 2 things together that really bring the power of this work to the forefront.

I'm curious, how have you seen the conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion evolve in the private sector and in the general public discourse? Can you think of any moments or initiatives that stand out to you as being accelerators for change?

Yes. So I think from my point of view, there's been this dramatic shift around the conversation of equality. I mean, really, the last 3 to 5 years has been really powerful. And I would say, since 2020, both with the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, we've really seen an acceleration of what's happening in society also permeating the walls inside of the private sector as well. And I think people want to interact with and work for brands that align with their values. And so we see this real culmination of culture and brand values. They've gone from this nice-to-have to a true competitive advantage. And I think we saw this really shift in earnest as said a few years ago, where you saw different brands and companies getting into hot water around their advertisements. Are they culturally sensitive? Are they inclusive? You see everything from boycotts to brands to things that are negatively impacting the employee environment. And of course, in 2020, this came into a very sharper image and around what were companies going to do? Is it related to racial quality and systemic change in the workplace? And Salesforce is one of the companies that really leaned in with our Racial Equality and Justice Task Force, and it's something that continues to be a really important pillar of our work on equality.

Yes. It seems like now more than ever, companies and brands cannot afford to be tone deaf to these issues.

That's right.

So let's look a little bit about some of the trends that are going on in D&I and corporate strategy and how that relates to that. So equality, along with innovation, are 2 of Salesforce's 4 core values. Are there any synergies that you see between these values and kind of talking about how equality might drive innovation or vice versa?

Absolutely. I think diversity drives greater innovation, plain and simple. I think that's something that we wholeheartedly believe. It's why it's one of our values, along with -- equality is one of our values along with innovation. I also think outside of Salesforce research has shown just more diverse companies are more likely to outperform non-diverse companies. And more and more during the recruiting experience people are looking for companies that show how they're taking action. It's not it is about what you say, but it's also about what you do, how you're cultivating, how you're freeing those experiences for the talent within your organization. And we're starting to see those same trends among shareholders and customers really bringing those diverse perspectives to the table. How do you be more inclusive with your customer base and with your employees? And how do you do it in new and innovative ways? I think these are the things that are going to start to propel business forward. And for us, creating that culture of equality is the right thing to do, but it's also the smart thing to do, really empowering us to innovate and build those deeper connections with our customers, fostering does move that more inclusive workplace with our employees. And it really is not just where, yes, we put up the numbers and have the representation, but how do you actually ensure that your employees are thriving and that we're ultimately becoming a better company because of that inclusion that we're fostering across?

Right. I totally agree with you. Being able to bring one's true self to work leads to better performance, which means better outcomes, more successful outcomes and particularly from a business sense.

Absolutely.

So I'd like to put a finer point on this for our audience. So I was wondering if you have any examples that you can share about this in action, where this diversity and inclusion actually helps lead to better and more successful outcomes.

Yes. So I'll highlight our work of our Racial Equality and Justice Task Force because I think it's really an opportunity where our employees and their allies came together to say, "Where should we really focus our efforts?" And so we have what we call our 4 Ps: philanthropy, procurement, policy and people. And when you think about the power of those 4 areas coming together, you start to see that it's not just about the people and the recruiting, it's not just about the philanthropy, but you can really start to see the power of your investment in minority-owned businesses. You start to see the power of our ventures organizations and the investments we're making with black founders. And you start to pull together around policy and where are we influencing different practices across the country. And so it's a real powerful combination where we're not trying to look at it myopically but really trying to say, "How does it come together?" How do we influence our Salesforce ecosystem? How do we work with our partners to diversify their -- support their diversification of their companies, but also how do we make sure we're powering that Salesforce ecosystems leading with our values and really going together with our partners and with our system integrators to change the way we work and live and how we think about this topic of diversity, equity and inclusion. It's -- you can start to amplify as you think about those ways of going together versus buying it alone on these topics.

Right. I like that anchoring it with 4 Ps to make it simple and then having that work within the ecosystem around Salesforce.

Yes. Well, it is also a really interesting way for us to measure. Because I think part of this is also just not what are you dealing with yield, but how do you actually measure that accountability and that success?

I'm glad you brought up measurement because I want to get into that a little bit later, so that would be a good conversation. But going back to kind of the public representation goals which Salesforce is looking at. Salesforce has a set of public representation goals, which outline your targets for underrepresented groups in the workforce and within management. Can you tell us a little bit more about these targets? I think many in the audience may be contemplating or working on their own DE&I targets. And I'm wondering kind of what a good target actually is. I just wonder if you have any kind of words of wisdom for them.

Sure, sure. It's a great question and something that I would say we've gotten better at over time. So we set our first public goal, you mentioned it at the top of our conversation, around 50% representation of underrepresented groups. And that one is really our first foray into it. And we thought, okay, let's give it a go. Let's see what it looks like. We ended up meeting the goal 1 year early this year. But along with our Racial Equality Task Force that I just mentioned, we also knew we wanted ways to measure that work. How are we actually going to have impact in our black community? And so we set 3 additional goals. One was to double U.S. representation of black leaders. So this is our BP+ community and increase representation of our underrepresented minority groups, so black, indigenous, Latinx and multiracial leaders by 50% by 2023. We also wanted to increase our overall U.S. representation of those same communities by 50%. And then our last one was 50% of our U.S. employees made up of the underrepresented groups, which we talked about earlier. And so what we really tried to do in setting those goals is really figure out where were the areas where we really wanted to have that intentional move of the dial. How do we bring the full power of Salesforce behind these polls so that it is everything from representation through experience? And it's not just my role and my team and our office of equality, but how do you bring in our leaders, how do you bring in everyone, again, from hiring to experience to really impact our communities of color and really make sure that we are intentional about increasing that representation. And so when we set our goals, we look at realistically what's achievable, but we also want to make sure we're pushing ourselves. And so when we think about what do we need to do it is not just hiring. It's also this notion of retention and making sure that when we think about our talent systems, how do we create those talent systems that are going to drive careers? We want to be the most inclusive company possible, and we want everybody to feel that support. We want them to feel that empowerment. And it really takes this combination of things. The goal is one thing. It's all the work that sits underneath it that really, I think, drives the change. And we think about it both from an accountability perspective, a goal perspective and the specific actions that not everybody needs to take to bring this -- operationalize this value of equality to life.

No, that makes sense. We have a similar effort underway here at RBC. But my experience even if you have the right tone at the top, it can be a challenge sometimes in those -- some of the little layers to get people to act. And you figure out what levers you need to push and how to train people and give them the right tools that they need in order to have some of these conversations and really think through how best to approach, making that a truly inclusive culture. I was wondering kind of how have you been dealing with those challenges on your end?

Well, I think that is the perpetual challenge. It's the sort of mushy middle layers, right, where things you need get lost in translation. We put so much on our managers, especially with the pandemic, it's hard to be all things to all people. And so we try to keep it very simple. What are the things that you can do as a manager to open the doors to make sure you're driving change, creating that inclusion. And I think some of it starts with a data-driven approach. You can't fix what you don't measure. And I think for us, it's really essential to have that transparency and continued focus. A couple of things that we've done, one example is in our sales organization. Every week when we have our forecast call, we also talk about our DE&I numbers. So it becomes part of our DNA to say, okay here is not only our forecast, here is also our hiring, and oh by the way, here it is what it looks like from a diversity perspective as we are looking at our hiring and again really bringing that through. We also have monthly spot cards for our leaders that show them how are they doing and we are in this fortunate position where we are a growth company, we are continuing to grow as an organization and so the opportunity there is it leaves us a lot of opportunity to not just have incremental change but really have meaningful change in our representation. It's a perpetual focus and one that's not easy and one that I don't think is ever done. I think this is really where the work in progress and the rolling up facilities really starts to happen in the organization.

Yes. That notion of data transparency leads to accountability leads to change. So I like that internal data transparency that you have and making sure leaders are equipped with the data so that they know exactly how they're trending and where those adjustments need to be made. That makes perfect sense. So I want to now if we could shift a little bit to inclusion. Targets are absolutely meaningful. They're a meaningful tool to advance diversity, but people may be wondering how do they work when you're trying to foster inclusion. I was curious if you have any ideas or best practices around some of the strategies or things that you all have implemented to ensure inclusion is also a major focus of your D&I efforts.

Yes. I think it's really important to focus on both experiences and systemic change. So when we think about our strategy, we have to think about how we redesign our systems and how those systems impact people's experiences. And our focus areas as it relates to experience are related to creating access, advocacy and community. And one example that's come up from us more recently, some of it was a result of our task force. Some of it has been external research. Some of it has been even looking at our own data, really focusing on the experience of how black women experience the workplace and not just in general, but in tech specifically. And how do we differentiate ourselves and ensure that you're doing that deep listening of this really important community in our organization and making sure that we are informed by that external research that we are doing that deep listening to our employees and we're creating a strategy that is intentional and impactful. Again, it's not just feel-good things, but things that are really going to impact a black woman's experience within our organization. And so we have specific initiative and focus related to our 4 Ps but very specifically tied to our black woman's experience. And we want to make sure that we are addressing that unique multilayer intersectional challenges that often confront this community. And so we've looked at everything from not just mentoring programs. This is not about fixing the black women, but actually, how do you create access and open doors and true meaningful sponsorship. How do we help educate our managers and our leaders around things like micro aggressions? What does that look like in practice? How do we go through scenarios so people learn how to disrupt the bias? And so it's a -- we try to take a very, very pragmatic approach. And again, from that accountability perspective, this is training that we do across our entire company. We recently rolled out what we call inclusive hiring and promotion practices. And we have had great success where 85% of our people managers and over 40,000 of our employees have gone through this training globally because we felt like it was really important for people to see what this looks like in practice. And then what can they do as a hiring manager to disrupt it so that we're starting to see this experience shift and create the differentiated experience in our organization. And we're starting to see progress. Our representation of black women in our organization, again, hiring and experience, we've doubled our representation in the last 2 years. And again, we always start with humility. I think we recognize that this journey to equality is a long one. And so we take all of those little wins, and we hope to string them together. We don't have all the answers on how this works, but we are committed to continuing that deep listening with our stakeholders, our peers and with the communities to make sure that we are finding new and innovative ways to accelerate our progress.

I find that companies that do really well in business that understand their customer, they emulate those same practices internally with the listening and doing the research and really trying to understand what the pulse of the employee is. So I like that. And I think that's definitely a good takeaway for all of us to really listen to your employees and do the research as you're crafting these strategies and these approaches. That could make the difference between whether you're successful or not or whether or not you're going to cross that credibility gap that often exists. So I want to switch gears and talk a little bit about the pandemic and just how it's affecting us all. The widespread work from home right now due to COVID-19 has led to some interesting and I think powerful insights and so, unfortunately, the negative impacts that underrepresented people often felt working in their offices. And as people return now to work, what are some of the things that companies can do to ensure that the office that their employees are returning to will be more inclusive, respectful and caring.

Yes. So I think it goes back to where we just ended, which is this deep listening to our employees, right? But in this pandemic, none of us have been in a pandemic like this before. And so honestly, we don't know what all the answers are. In some ways, people are chomping at the bit to get back to the office because they want that connection. We have so many employees who'd started during the pandemic who haven't met their colleagues. And then we have others that you mentioned into are may be a little nervous about going back into the office and those -- what's going to be different from where they were before. And so it's interesting. The pandemic has given us and given all employers this sort of rare opportunity to reimagine the workplace. And for us, we've tried not to lose that advantage of this reimagining. This is a system that's been broken, and we all have to -- we get this opportunity to redesign it as we're figuring out what success-from-anywhere world looks like in the future. And so I would say, early in the pandemic, we introduced things like wellness surveys to understand how our employees were feeling. We tried to find ways to address these key pain points, and again, partnering really closely with our employee resource groups. They've been such about -- such valuable partners for us to really guide those people strategies. And I'd say the #1 thing is like none of our communities are a monolith. None of their experiences during this pandemic have been the same. And so what we're really leading with is this notion of flexibility. This is really the #1 thing that our employees have asked for from many different communities. And I think we, as a company, talk a lot about success from anywhere. This approach of flexibility of when and where to work has been really impactful. And I think this has proven to be a really powerful draw for women and disproportionately -- who have been disproportionately impacted during the pandemic. We've introduced some new benefits, including extended family care leave and global backup child care, elder care. And we're finding that it's not just their experiences in the workplace, but what are those opportunities for us to scaffold around people what they need to be successful in whichever part of the workplace they're going to be in, in the future. And so this is something that we've thought a lot about. And I would say we're really seeing the advantages of this success-from-anywhere strategy, accelerating our equality efforts, even more broadly than specifically related to women. It's really about the way we hire rather than where we hire. How do we tap into new talent? How do we broaden our search so that it extends outside of hubs or city centers where we may have traditionally hired? So I think we've been able to tap into some new communities and really see the true diversity across our company or across the country and really globally as well. We've done some things like how do you pin into a time zone instead of to a city. When you pin into a time zone and you start to see the wider range of people, areas you can recruit from. And so I think together, all of these efforts have helped us increase our representation from a hiring perspective, but then also allows us to introduce some of that flexibility that people are looking for coming back from the pandemic.

Well, that's really powerful. I like the global approach to what you're thinking about. But frankly, it sounds like you're in the disruption business. When I talk to other people that work in this area in the DE&I space, we always felt like Chief Disruption Officers. We're disrupting things because times are changing. But I did want to touch upon one area, which is piloting and trying out different things. Salesforce just strikes me as a company that part of that innovation is just trying new things and not being afraid to test, try, fail fast, tweak, iterate, innovate. I was wondering if you could kind of talk about that process and how you manage that.

Sure. So I think some of this -- we've been talking a lot about this notion of listening. Well, sometimes it's hard to tell. Is this isolated? Is it across the board? And so a lot of our greatest ideas are innovations trying to solve interesting problems that we're trying to learn more about. One example I'll share with you is what a group we have, which is an employee advocacy and belonging group. It's what we call our Warm Line. And so this was born out of -- I talked about my first role at the company was in our employee relations organization. So employee relations, you're really getting the -- what are the most significant issues that might be raised within a company? And what we found is that there were sometimes issues that were not necessarily things that required an investigation, but there's a little something happening maybe from an inclusion perspective or my progression point of view or something we might have heard in an exit interview. We thought, okay, it's just -- this is -- the investigation is not quite the right tool. How do we address this in a new and different way? And so we started -- there was a partner of mine that I was working with within the business. She had a great connection within our communities of color. And she and I just started working on it on the side hustle of like how do we support the communities? How do we better understand what's happening? And it was one of our initiatives that we started about 18 months ago to say, "How do we create a space where we're supporting our employees?" And 18 months into it, we now have a Warm Line that went from 2 people to 10 people. And we're supporting our black, Latinx, indigenous, multiracial communities, women of all races, our LGBTQ+ communities and really focused on experience. And this has been a really fabulous way for us to more closely connect with our communities and be able to learn what's really creating their experiences and driving what works and what doesn't. And I will have to say, right now, this is where so much of our innovation is coming from, from a DE&I perspective because we have that close connection with our community. And just some top line learnings from us have been especially right now, people are thinking about their career. What is their career within the organization? And what are those barriers to greater careers? Just earlier, I talked a little bit about one of our focus was on access, this power of opening doors as being one of the best ways we can support our communities of color in that sort of middle that we're always trying to tackle. And that focus was a direct correlation back to the things we are hearing from our Warm Line. The other thing was our managers. We realized our managers were really struggling with inclusion during the pandemic. How do you create that community when you have so many new hires that have started during the pandemic? And so again, we could really keenly focus and spin out what we call Warm Line connections, which was sort of this online speed connections as a way to create community online. And so they've been very simple, but it's really been -- here, we thought we needed to create macro programs. And by just listening to our employees, we found out it's a few small, simple things like this power of opening doors and finding intentional ways to create connections that have had the greatest impact. And some of that came from just listening through an intentional group like Warm Line.

And asking the right questions, too. I mean, oftentimes, we ask the right question, you get that feedback that you need. And when you see those consistencies, you can start something new and then try it out. That makes perfect sense. So I'll switch gears a little bit and talk about some of the external aspects of your job and how you work with stakeholders in this space. And I'm just curious, along the way as you're crafting your approach to DE&I at Salesforce, are there any groups or organizations that you would suggest other companies engage with or perhaps some that you've engaged with that you'd care to share?

Yes. It's interesting. We get all of our best resources again from our equality groups. They're out in the community. They're out making connections. We also try to work really closely with our customers and partners. We have this amazing Salesforce ecosystem that allows us to really go together to tackle really difficult topics. And one of the things that a number of companies are grappling with is things like self-identification outside of the U.S. How do you identify communities? How do you do these things in a legal and in a culturally sensitive way? And none of us have the answers to these issues or these questions. And so a lot of times, it's joining forums like this, it's connecting with those close partners to say, are there opportunities for us to go together and really put -- lock arms and figure out how do we put our heads together to say, "What's the way we can do this and we can amplify each other's impact." I also think there's great communities. There's an organization called nFormation. They've done some wonderful research around the experiences of women of color in the workplace. And so leveraging those research opportunities as well so that, again, we're not just looking myopically internally, but how do we understand how we can have greater impact and leverage that external experience. And so those are the partners that we work with most closely, I would say. We don't have all the answers, but we're curious and we want to find them. And so just continuing to find those opportunities to go together, I think, is the most powerful way we can all leverage our networks and our trusted relationships within our various ecosystems and communities to really move the dial in these areas. We just -- we have to be intentional about it. And I think so many of us are working together and partnering together for lots of different business drivers. And I think equality is just another business driver we should be adding to the list of opportunities to collaborate for impact.

Right. Well, you and I are definitely going to have a bat line, so we can compare what's going forward.

Absolutely. We got to learn, right? Because, again, nobody has the straight line to the answer. It's -- we're all sort of fumbling our way through, especially post pandemic.

So I want to talk a little bit about enabling economic inclusion. And companies talk about this. Everybody that's talking about is trying to figure out what does that actually mean for their business and looking at it through their lens. Salesforce seems to really walk the walk when it comes to enabling economic inclusion. So I wanted to ask you about the equal pay initiative and the supplier diversity program, which I know are really standout initiatives. I was wondering if you could tell us more about these programs and how they've been received by your employees and suppliers.

Sure. Well, I think we're very well known for our gender pay, which also includes pay of our underrepresented communities as well. And so it really has been one of our most powerful examples of our commitment to equality, and it's an ongoing commitment to pay fairness and equal pay. This started back in 2015. We really made that commitment to, again, be curious to investigate how do we eliminate any gender pay gaps amongst our workforce. And we continue to improve and evolve our process. We, as I mentioned, broadened our scope to assess. We include gender globally then race and ethnicity in the U.S. and really looking at those intersectional impacts. And we look at it from our merit, our bonuses, our stock perspective. And to date, we've spent $16.2 million to ensure that our global workforce is paid fairly. We tried to look at every aspect of that employee journey to help level that playing field and think about not just equality, but you need equity to get to equality. So it's everything from our recruiting processes to our promotions to that ongoing employee success. Now as it relates to our supplier diversity program, this was, as I mentioned, 1 of our 4 Ps. And so this is an area where we've really been laser-focused. And so when we established our goal, the task force has committed to $100 million of Black Bone businesses and $100 million to Black Latinx indigenous-founded businesses by 2023. And so we had an initial goal of our first year to hit 25% increase. This year, we were so excited. We saw an increase of 50%. And so we are more than halfway to these goals, which has been, again, really, really powerful and impacting not just again, equal pay internally, but also making sure that the businesses -- the Black bone businesses that we are engaging with are also getting that fair pay and that fair opportunity to our business. And so it's really that power of the 2, both inside and externally, that we feel like we're starting to get momentum and start having those small bits of impact that over time, hopefully, will build that greater momentum for the communities.

I think the key lesson here is when companies really aggressively do inclusive supplier programs, they kind of underestimate the fact that a large company like Salesforce doing business with a smaller minority-owned or indigenous-owned company, that helps them in the long run in terms of being able to showcase the clients and the customers that they have, and it has an accretive effect. So something to think about as companies are thinking how to enable economic inclusion, it's almost like that ripple effect. You put the stone in the water and just ripples out it. It can happen. It's great.

Absolutely. And the other area is really around underrepresented entrepreneurs. When you think about the investments that we as a company and other companies can make to helping entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities get off their feet and get those early investment funds, we start to create a richer and more diverse environment of entrepreneurs that will be selling to all of us in no time. And so it also really starts in that beginning in those early investment stages as well where you can really -- small dollar amounts can have massive impact and an opportunity for our communities of color as well.

So Salesforce has been a strong champion for equality and equity for people with disabilities. I was wondering if you could tell us more about your accessibility programs and how it's increasing belonging and inclusion for employees with disabilities. Anything that come to mind that you're particularly proud of?

Yes. Well, it's interesting. A couple of years ago, we actually set up a separate and very specific office of accessibility to really ensure that accessibility was in our products we sell, in our experiences in our offices. We are a company that has big events like Dreamforce. How do we make sure that they are accessible? And so again, we try to look at our systems and processes end-to-end. So it wasn't just how do we think about the inclusion internally, but how do we think about it through our life cycle. And I think this has been a really powerful way for us to help the community and really make sure that we're incorporating those accessible experiences into all those different aspects of our businesses. And so we include individuals with disabilities throughout every piece of our development processes. Again, we really listen deeply to understand how do we really make sure that what we're doing is going to improve that experience and that people have the best experiences with our products that we increase that adoption and that we're really uncovering technologies or solutions that might not be meeting those user needs. I think it's really powerful. It's both what do we know people need, but again, making sure we're listening and uncovering those areas where we might be creating systemic barriers that we've not been paying enough attention to. And so our office of accessibility is just an amazing partner, and they really help us think about it, everything from experiences to events all the way through to the way we develop our products and the way people use our products from a design point of view.

So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the role of sustainable finance, if I may. In June of last year, Salesforce announced an inaugural sustainability bond, a $1 billion offering. And proceeds of the bond will not only support Salesforce's green efforts, including renewable energy and green buildings, but also expenditures related to social economic advancement and empowerment and commitment to racial equality. And kind of in the spirit of what we've been talking about, I was wondering if you could touch on how Salesforce is connecting its financing and capital strategy with your D&I at work and goals.

Yes. Well, again, I think it's really important to be intentional about the investments. And we've -- some of the experts we've been talking to estimate that there is a funding gap of trillions of dollars to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. And so it's really important that we're bringing all of those financial resources to the table as well as robust programs. I think the bond is just one example of how our financial capital can really accelerate DE&I goals. Other way, something that we've done this year, is connecting your ESG goals to compensation. For the first time this year, we will be connecting our executive comp to these goals. And so when you think about it, again, it's sort of that external, what are you doing in the community and then also, how do you make sure you're holding yourself accountable. And I think those in conjunction with what we were just talking about, that increased spend with diverse suppliers, our ventures and making sure that we're thinking about our Salesforce venture impact fund in a way that focuses on getting capital to those underrepresented founders and leaders. We just start to create access for people who historically may have not had access to that kind of capital. And so you start to think about these things as a strategy, not just individual programs, but how do you really pull the full power of them together to say what's that greater impact you're going to have in this -- in the financial experiences of people of color, and you start to see the magnitude of impact you can have over time.

So unfortunately, I'd love to continue our conversation, and we will off-line.

We can talk all day.

I want to leave you with a final question and just to kind of get your take on, what are you excited about this year? You're doing all the stuff. You're the innovator, you're the disruptor, you're piloting, your listening, you're doing research, you've got the bond going on, you've got all these different things around DE&I. But what are you excited about for this year?

So I'm an optimist by nature. And so it's interesting. This work is really hard. It's -- in an interview like this, it makes it seems so simple, but it continues to be really hard work. The perpetual optimist in me continues to have the vision of we will be the most inclusive workplace possible. And with that full support of our employees, our leaders, our communities, our partners, these are the things that we want to continue to focus on: accelerating our representation, focusing on that employee experience, designing our systems of equality at the center and also engaging our stakeholders. Again, how do we go together with our communities and our ecosystem. And so my door is open, and I look forward to the opportunity to partner with your organization and others who are trying to achieve these same goals. Again, I think the work is tough. And the more we can lean on each other and amplify each other's work, just the greater impact we can have together. So just really appreciate the opportunity to have the conversation and look forward to what we can do when we go together.

Well, at some point, you'll write a book, and so I want to make sure I get that first autographed copy because you're doing great work at Salesforce. Lori, thank you so much for sharing your insights and experience with us and all the things that you're doing at Salesforce. It's awesome. And I certainly appreciate your wisdom personally and your leadership in the DE&I space. So I am rooting for you from RBC Capital Markets and looking forward to working with you going forward. And thank you, everyone, in the audience for attending our session. Please enjoy the rest of RBC Capital Markets Global Environmental, Social and Governance Conference. Cheers.