FILE PHOTO: Robin Washington speaks on stage during 2019 Watermark Conference for Women Silicon Valley at San Jose McEnery Convention Center on February 22, 2019 in San Jose, California.
Marla Aufmuth | Wireimage | Getty Images
Salesforce on Wednesday said former Gilead Sciences finance chief Robin Washington will join the software maker to become president and chief financial and operating officer. Washington will join Salesforce in March, replacing finance chief Amy Weaver and operating chief Brian Millham, who will retire in May.
In August, Salesforce said Weaver would step down once the company had named a successor. Under Weaver, Salesforce widened its adjusted operating margin earlier than planned after activist investors came in to the stock.
Shares of Salesforce slipped almost 2% in extended trading.
Washington, 62, has been Salesforce’s lead independent director since 2022, after taking a seat on its board in 2013. In 2019, she retired from Gilead and became a director at Alphabet. Washington will remain on Salesforce’s board, and Arnold Donald, the former Carnival CEO who has been on Salesforce’s board since 2023, will become lead independent director, according to a statement.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff praised Washington’s abilities in an X post.
“A visionary leader, former CFO of Gilead & Hyperion, and longtime Salesforce board member, Robin’s expertise will guide us into the Agentforce era,” Benioff wrote. Salesforce has been busy promoting Agentforce add-on software that can automate sales and customer service processes inside of companies.
Earlier in her career, Washington ran finance at enterprise software provider Hyperion and was a vice president at software seller PeopleSoft. She has also been an auditor at Deloitte. Hyperion and PeopleSoft were both acquired by Oracle, where Benioff worked before he co-founded Salesforce in 1999.
Millham took a job as president of commercial sales at Salesforce months after the company’s establishment. He was promoted to president and operating chief in August 2022. In early 2023, when co-CEO Bret Taylor left in 2023, Millham took on some of Taylor’s responsibilities.
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