Marc Benioff is Chair, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Salesforce and a pioneer of cloud computing.
Under Benioff's leadership, Salesforce is the #1 provider of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software globally.
Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999, and it is now a Fortune 500 company with 50,000 employees, guided by four core values — trust, customer success, innovation and equality. The company has been recognized as the Most Innovative Company by Forbes, a Best Place to Work by Fortune, and the 10th Most Admired Company in the World by Fortune.
Benioff was named “Innovator of the Decade” by Forbes and is recognized as one of the World’s 25 Greatest Leaders by Fortune and one of the 10 Best-Performing CEOs by Harvard Business Review. For his leadership on equality, Benioff has been honored by GLAAD, the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative and Variety Magazine with its EmPOWerment Award.
Building a different kind of company, Benioff created Salesforce to not only develop great products, but also to have a positive impact on the world. On day 1, Benioff created the 1-1-1 model of philanthropy, which leverages the resources of Salesforce to improve communities around the world. Today, more than 9,000 companies have adopted the 1-1-1 model through the Pledge 1% movement.
Benioff and his wife, Lynne, have focused their philanthropy on children’s health, the environment, public education and homelessness. The Benioffs have given more than $250 million to the University of California, San Francisco to build UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland. In 2016, they created the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to study and solve ocean issues around the world.
A member of the World Economic Forum ("WEF") Board of Trustees, Benioff serves as the inaugural Chair of WEF's Forum Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco.
Before launching Salesforce, Benioff spent 13 years at Oracle Corporation, where he was the youngest vice president in company history. When he was 14 years old, he sold his first piece of software, “How to Juggle,” for $75. He founded his first company, Liberty Software, which created video games, at the age of 15.
Benioff received a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California, where he is on its Board of Trustees. In 2014, USC awarded Benioff an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
