Amy Weaver
Amy Weaver
Executive Vice President and General Counsel
Salesforce
Salesforce came out swinging last spring when Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. “Our CEOs were all over Twitter, Facebook and social media talking about this and raising concerns about the Act and how it could be used potentially for discrimination for sexual orientation,” Amy Weaver says. Indianapolis is Salesforce’s largest hub of employees outside the Bay Area and it was an employee group called Outsource that first raised concerns about RFRA.
Weaver was among a team that traveled to Indianapolis to work with Salesforce’s ExactTarget CEO Scott McCorkle and a coalition of corporations, civic groups, civil rights organizations, the NCAA, and eventually legislators.
“It’s really amazing to me when you pull together such a diverse group for one goal, what can happen. All of those organizations had different reasons for their opposition of the Act and were coming from different points of view, and yet when we pulled that diversity together for one goal it was absolutely incredible to me how quickly we were able to achieve really lasting change,” Weaver says.
By Friday of that firestorm week, Weaver stood at the beautiful Indiana Statehouse watching RFRA amendments be sworn in that explicitly protect sexual orientation and gender identity. It was a powerful moment in a career that has shown Weaver how diversity draws innovation, how blending in isn’t as important as authenticity, and how being true to your own values and style really pays off in the long run.