Twelve years ago, Salesforce Boston wasn't large enough to be nominated for any type of workplace award. Back then, you could count the number of Salesforce employees on a single hand, and we held meetings in the local Panera and Au Bon Pain cafes on Boylston Street! Now, we have offices in Boston, Burlington, and Cambridge, and The Boston Globe has just recognized Salesforce as one of Boston's Top Places to Work.

All of us at Salesforce Boston know we have a great workplace in a great city. Our Ohana (the Hawaiian word for “chosen family”) is a little unusual in that we represent all aspects of Salesforce. We have large groups of employees from our product, distribution, and customer success teams, as well as some of the newest members of our Ohana from Mulesoft.

Though our workplace is spread among three offices, the work we've done to come together as one team has been a success. We created our Boston executive steering committee to create alignment among leaders and a Volunteer Time Off (VTO) committee to align our employee resources for greater impact in the community. We've united in service to the children of the Timilty School in Boston and to those in need through Habitat for Humanity and area charities. And, I won't pretend that we all didn't derive great satisfaction as we united to raise money for Light the Night — and raised more than our New York colleagues. All in good fun for a great cause. Go Sox!

As I look ahead to the future, Salesforce is well positioned for continued growth and success. With our new Education Cloud, we are perfectly placed to help create success for the dozens of colleges and universities that call Boston home. Our proximity to world-class healthcare institutions creates unique opportunities to help them navigate the future with our new Health Cloud product. In fact, having so much higher education and healthcare companies in the area has helped fuel our economy and cultivate growth for our company in all segments of our business.

The Boston's Top Places to Work award is a wonderful recognition of what’s happening for us in Boston — but it’s just the beginning. I look forward to continuing this adventure with you and experiencing all the great the great things to come.