Good morning. Longtime Salesforce executive Amy Weaver is stepping down from her role as president and CFO after a three-and-a-half-year tenure in the position. Her CFO tenure coincided with a period of growth at the company, and came after Weaver undertook a very unusual C-suite shift—one that involved trading in the role of top legal officer for top financial officer.
In a LinkedIn post on Aug. 28, Weaver said she decided to step down “after nearly 11 wonderful years at Salesforce” and she’s “excited about my next chapter and the new opportunities ahead.” Weaver also pointed to a pivotal career move she made at the company.
“My time at Salesforce has been an incredible experience—from joining as general counsel to leading the legal and corporate affairs teams to taking the truly unprecedented step to jump over to become CFO,” Weaver wrote. She also noted Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s “expansive vision” of her career.
Weaver joined Salesforce, the cloud-based software giant, in 2013 as SVP and general counsel. In January 2020, she became president and chief legal officer. The company announced on Dec. 1, 2020, that Weaver would become president and CFO in February 2021, succeeding CFO Mark Hawkins, who was retiring. The same day in 2020 that Salesforce announced the CFO transition, it also reported it would acquire the workplace messaging app Slack for $27.7 billion.
Before joining Salesforce, Weaver was EVP and general counsel of Univar Solutions Inc., SVP and deputy general counsel at Expedia, Inc., and practiced as an attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and at Perkins Coie. Before entering private practice, she served as a legislative aide for the Hong Kong Legislative Council and as a clerk in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
I asked Scott W. Simmons, co-managing partner of Crist Kolder Associates, a senior-level executive search firm, what he’s seen regarding general counsels moving into CFO roles. “It is not at all common,” Simmons told me. The legal route to CFO “doesn’t even register as a path” in the firm’s most recent Volatility Report,” he said.
The firm’s report is based on data from 671 Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies through Aug. 1. The research finds that three-quarters of CFOs came directly from a number two finance position, such as a corporate finance executive, controller, and chief accounting officer.
Simmons also conducted a search on S&P Capital IQ of 1,478 publicly traded companies in the U.S. earning over $1 billion in revenue. Less than 3% of CFOs in that data set have a JD degree. Even taking into account a margin for error in this data, “it does prove the point that it is extremely rare for CFOs to also be lawyers,” he said.
However, Simmons noted that the most important trait for any CFO position is strong leadership.
“Amy has been an incredible executive at Salesforce, leading many of the company’s most important strategic and operational initiatives over the last decade,” Benioff said in a statement in the announcement. “And, she has been an amazing partner to me personally.”
Since Weaver began her tenure as finance chief in 2021, Salesforce has moved up 14 spots in the Fortune 500. The company’s annual revenue for its fiscal year 2023 was $31.4 billion, an 18% increase year over year. On Aug. 28, Salesforce reported revenue of $9.33 billion for the quarter ended July 31, up 8% year over year. “Operating margins closed at record highs with GAAP operating margin of 19.1%, up 190 basis points year over year, and Non-GAAP operating margin of 33.7%, up 210 basis points year over year,” Weaver said in a statement.
A successor for Weaver has not yet been appointed. “I’ll be at the company while we conduct an internal and external search, so no goodbyes for now,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Tatsuro Omura was named CFO at Mazda North American Operations, effective immediately. Omura previously served as general manager of the business structure strategy department at Mazda Motor Corporation in Hiroshima, Japan. He will now play a key role in steering Mazda's financial strategy and operations in the U.S.
Big Deal
As companies increasingly invest in AI, there may need to be more communication with employees about how the technology will be used. Many U.S. adults see more harm than good from the use of AI and believe it will cost jobs, according to the latest survey from Bentley University and Gallup.
The survey of 5,835 U.S. adults found that 56% believe AI has a net neutral effect—doing equal amounts of harm and good. Meanwhile, 31% believe it does more harm than good, and 13% believe the good of AI outweighs its harm.
Three-quarters of Americans say AI will reduce the total number of jobs in the country over the next 10 years. And 77% of adults do not trust businesses much (44%) or at all (33%) to use AI responsibly.
There are steps businesses can take to alleviate these concerns, according to Gallup. Americans most frequently say companies should be transparent about how AI is being used in business practices (57%). No other strategy was chosen by more than 34% of respondents, according to the report.
Going deeper
How AI Analytics Spurs Innovation at Newly Public Firms is a new report in Wharton’s business journal. It discusses a new study by experts at Wharton and elsewhere that advises how AI can stop innovation declines at early-stage firms. The “innovation decline” is attributed to three factors: prioritizing short-term financial goals at the cost of longer-run innovation payoffs; meeting higher disclosure requirements; and lower managerial and employee incentives.
Overheard
“Women are conspicuously absent from recent lists celebrating AI leaders. Women can be the flirty voice of your AI assistant, but not the metaphorical voice for the AI industry. So where is the disconnect?”
—Brooke Hartley Moy, cofounder and CEO of the AI startup Infactory, writes in a Fortune opinion piece titled, “I’m a woman working in ‘deep tech.’ Here’s why you don’t see more women in AI (hint: it isn’t a pipeline problem).” Hartley Moy previously held roles at Humane, Google, Slack, and Salesforce.
