The Salesforce CFO who left to save lives
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Does it ever feel like you're paying for 20 platforms to do the job of what really should be just one? That's not software as a service or SaaS. It's SAD, software as a disservice. Replacing your stitched together tech stack with one platform for all your departments? Well, that's rippling. Rippling eliminates the bottlenecks and busy work of legacy tools and point solutions by uniting your global HR, IT, and spend teams on just one platform. And right now, you can get six months of Rippling free when you sign up at rippling.com slash scale. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot com slash scale. Don't get sad, get Rippling. Terms and conditions apply. Got to the end of the call, and I agreed I would at least think about it.
So the next week I'm thinking about it, and I came to the same conclusion. This is ridiculous. I am not going to do it. Because you're not— Crazy. Right. Yes, exactly. It was absolutely unprecedented. Amy Weaver had just been offered a new job, Chief Financial Officer of Salesforce. It took her totally by surprise, but the opportunity was too intriguing to pass up. Amy had already spent enough time at the iconic software company to know it'd be hard work, but hard work worth doing. How do we make it faster? How do we make it more efficient? How do we get rid of any of the bottlenecks? It's very hard to scale if you have a rickety platform. You really have to invest in having the right systems, the right processes in place.
If you've got those, you can scale very, very quickly. You got to have incredible talent at every position. There are fires burning when you're going home. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to, this is totally going to be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working as a three-bedroom apartment. Stuff that just seems absolutely nut balls. Ten years later, we're like, well, that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it. This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, we're talking with Amy Weaver. As someone who's had a pretty non-linear career myself, after all, it is not every former public defender who goes on to work at places like MySpace and the NFL and lead companies and host a podcast like Masters of Scale.
I'm always drawn to others who've charted unconventional paths, and Amy's story is truly an extraordinary one. We reveal how Amy, a lawyer by training, zigzagged her way into the job of chief financial officer at Salesforce. We also dig into the latest challenge she's taken on. As I dove in and started learning more and more about direct relief, I realized that it's probably the largest, most efficient, most effective, and most impactful global humanitarian group that you may never have heard of. Amy is now the CEO of Direct Relief. You may not have heard of it, but you need to know what it is. It is an incredible humanitarian organization that distributes billions of dollars worth of medicine and supplies to people in need every single year.
We'll talk more about that later in our conversation. Amy, welcome to Masters of Scale. Thank you, Jeff. I'm really excited to be here. I'm thrilled you're here. We have so much to talk about. You come from a family of lawyers. Being a lawyer almost seemed preordained. So when you say I come from a family of lawyers, that's not an overstatement. I think we stopped counting after we hit, you know, 12, 15 in the extended family. My grandfather served on the Washington State Supreme Court. He had four children. All four, including my father, became lawyers. I'm the oldest grandchild. It just felt very natural to become a lawyer. Did you have a vision of what that would be for you? Well, if you had asked me in sixth grade what I saw as my future, I thought I would practice law in Washington state and at some point move into the public sector.
And I was determined that I would eventually be the first female president of the United States.
What motivated Amy Weaver to leave Salesforce?
And I was so earnest as a 12-year-old that I remember I actually sat down and made a list of who my cabinet would be.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–4:37
2
What motivated Amy Weaver to leave Salesforce?
4:37–13:33
3
How did Amy transition from CFO to CEO of Direct Relief?
13:33–14:01
4
What is Direct Relief and what impact does it have?
14:01–21:07
5
How does Amy's background influence her leadership style?
21:07–31:52
6
What challenges did Amy face when moving to Direct Relief?
31:52–42:20