5 *good* moves by 5 top CEOs

Driving purpose via positive societal impact *and* profit in business is hard. It requires support and authentic championship from good CEOs like these.  I’ve been fortunate to work for and learn from these five leaders over the past 20+ years. Many of their contributions to their teams, impact agendas and the broader world are worth copying.😀

Here are 5 *good* moves that 5 of my CEOs (Marc Benioff, Jeff Weiner, Aaron Levie, Rich Barton and Peter McKay) made during my time on their teams. I hope they inspire you and your exec's to invest more in your societal+business impact/ESG agenda.

1. Marc Benioff (Salesforce) starting in 2001

Advocacy: Being a visible and fierce advocate [read activist 😂] for Salesforce values-aligned cause areas impacting society and their ecosystem [read ohana].

New Scalable Models: Helping grow the Salesforce Foundation and a fresh new packaging for corporate social impact [1/1/1 model] in the earliest days of the company.

Impact Integration: Adding Salesforce Foundation/.org into all aspects of company from the beginning. Societal impact has always been included in: The V2MOM (annual planning framework); Company values (Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and now... Sustainability!); Company goals (grow massively always 😂); Budgets for societal impact across the company (not just in their societal impact-focused departments); Core tech offerings (Donated/discounted Enterprise Edition to nonprofits and reinvested profit from this effort to make salesforce.org more sustainable and started building impact-specific tools); Employee journey (every employee volunteers on their first day); Employee recognition structures (awards for impact); Ecosystem events as forces for good (especially Dreamforce), etc.

Visible Sponsorship: Supporting lots of key initiatives earlier than most CEOs wouldn't have. For example, making a group or location had an impact enablement FTE when it reached 200 staff; Hiring less traditional talent from nonprofit workforce development agencies; Investing extensively in employee resource groups and broader equity and belonging endeavors before it was trendy, etc.

Personal Contribution / Modeling: Weaving he and his family's impressive personal philanthropy into many of the endeavors pursued by Salesforce in key cities - especially San in Francisco.

It will forever make me proud to be quoted in this important book Marc and Karen Southwick wrote in 2004. Many if its principles still hold true after 18 years. Buy it and Marc's more recent books which are full of impact tips here.

2. Jeff Weiner (Linkedin) starting 2012

Leading by Example: Being, at one point at least, a busy CEO serving on more nonprofit boards than corporate.  Jeff's keynotes at LinkedIn and at nonprofit events like the Boys and Girls of the Peninsula Youth of the Year event always inspired me and put wind in my sails. He's one of the most heart-felt, articulate and charismatic public speakers I've ever observed.

Amplifying Peers: Always praising and driving awareness for nonprofit leaders he admires and supports. Paul Farmer (RIP) of Partners in Health and Charles Best of DonorsChoose.org are two great examples. I love how Jeff always refers to Charles, a nonprofit founder, as one of the most talented entrepreneurs he's ever known.

Impact Integration: Offering support for something I founded called Linkedin Nonprofit Solutions now Linkedin for Nonprofits, a group that now employs dozens of LinkedIn folks who enable success for thousands of nonprofit customers receiving discounted rates, extra support and nonprofit community enablement around Linkedin's organizational offerings.

Here's a video we made in 2011 to assure success for nonprofits using Linkedin.

Scalable Models: Always seeing the nonprofit sector as a key part of the “Linkedin Economic Graph”. This affiliation gave Linkedin's work enabling nonprofits an even greater stage to play on. Seeing and serving nonprofits as a key part of the global economy is both appropriate and important.

Fostering Culture: One of the things I admire most about Jeff and the his direct reports was their significant investment in Linkedin culture and keeping things human, even as the company blasted into global corporate super stardom. I'll never forget watching employees perform their "special talent" for the entire company at all hands meetings on their first day. I'll never forget the "Leadership, Leverage and Results" success formula Jeff and his team instilled in us. Winners at Linkedin bring their peers along. They don't win alone.

3. Aaron Levie (Box) starting 2014

Aaron's 3 minute honoree speech at the 2017 Tipping Point Awards in SF, CA

Impact Visibility: As the above image and linked video suggest, using his influence and platform [including his amazing twitter feed] in positive ways. Related to this, I admire how Aaron shared the stage with those of us advancing positive societal impact for the Box team and world around us.

Values-rooted Impact Integration: Helping bring the Box company value of "Make mom proud" to life by helping us launch Box.org with significant fanfare [via this press release] in the spring of 2014. Here are my fondest memories from Box.org's first six years.

Increasing Investment: Growing the Box.org team from 1 to 2 staff and then 3! Always making sure Box.org got increased resourcing [even if a small increase 😂] and more cross-departmental sponsorship year over year. It's so fun to see Box.org's team and positive impact continue to blossom. Seeing over 11,000 nonprofits now enjoy donated / discounted access to the Box platform has made it's positive mark!

Sustainable Funding Approaches: Helping fund and launch the Box.org Fund in 2018. We were ecstatic to contribute organizational funds (+ equity), executive contributions and a percentage of revenue contributed by global nonprofits customers receiving donated or discounted Box access to the fund on a quarterly basis. This helped us scale key initiatives and partnerships via grants. One exciting multi-year grant this approach enabled, founding NetHope's Center for the Digital Nonprofit, is highlighted here.

Personal Contribution: Teaming up with his wife Joelle and contributing personally to many Box.com values-aligned initiatives and nonprofit partners. For example, supporting Build.org's important mission in the spring of 2019.

4. Rich Barton (Zillow) starting 2020

Impact Integration Baby Steps: Supporting the expansion of Zillow for Good and taking baby steps toward adding impact to Zillow OKRs. Here are my fondest memories of this work.

Approving Impact: Approving $1 million in funding support for key social justice .orgs immediately following George Floyd’s murder. "Racism has no home here". 

Technical Investment: Supporting the hiring of extra developers to build social impact innovation into Zillow’s platforms including a focus on the expansion of this affordable housing search tool.

Cheerleading for Impact: Helping rally a seven figure fundraise with employees during beginning of CV-19. As I recall, he even promised to sing a duet with another senior officer if the fundraising goal was achieved. 😂

Personal Contribution: Was philosophically supportive of closer alignment between his family's philanthropic efforts and Zillow's.

5. Peter McKay (Snyk) starting in 2021

Business Integration Leaps: Helping us launch Snyk Impact during his 2021 SnykCon Keynote (listen from minute 4:30 here if you're wondering how to have your CEO position impact with your stakeholders) and adding "Make a Snyk Impact" to Snyk's 2022 priorities short-list.

Being Hands On: Joining all early Snyk Impact steering committee meetings. Here are early Snyk Impact wins championed by the committee in its first nine months. It was exciting to see nonprofits start to engage Snyk's platform [donated / discounted] to increase their developer/product security! Peter was first in line to see what Snyk employees had to say in the Snyk Impact Survey we sent to all staff a few weeks into my time there.

Creative Funding Support: Supporting many of our creative approaches to funding early impact endeavors. Examples include: Passing through 100% of SnykCon and DevSecCon sponsorship fee's (five and six figure amounts) to our nonprofit parters.

Impact Innovation/Culture Support: Supporting a prominent societal impact thread in our first annual Build Day for Impact Challenge during which about 125 cross-functional teams (800+ staff participating in total) developed business critical ideas/plans for the business that would also move societal impact needles. The impact + profit creativity was incredible.

Personal Contribution: Contributing personally on behalf of Snyk in critical impact (social and environmental) funding areas including the company's disaster response, environmental and local office funding/fundraising areas to name just a few.

In future articles I will include things I wish my CEO's had done differently, but for now let's focus on the the good moves they made. 😂

Before I wrap this up...

Jerre Stead (former Ingram Micro CEO- Known to say "work is play with a purpose"), David Hagan (former FirstSource CEO- My biggest advocate as a sales professional), and Andy Mercy (former AngelPoints CEO- Creator of a company that was mobilizing corporate social impact way ahead of the trend)- I'm sorry to not include your contributions in this piece. I appreciate many of the things y'all did to infuse purpose and impact into your orgs.

If we can help your organization enable he/sheroic impact DM me or schedule a Zoom call with me here.