Salesforce Names its Permanent Equality Chief Amid Diversity Push

Lori Castillo Martinez has been promoted as Salesforce’s new Chief Equality Officer. She had held the role on an interim basis for the past six months but has now made the change permanent.

Before stepping up to lead the software company’s team devoted to people and equality initiatives, Castillo Martinez was Salesforce’s Head of Global Employee Relations and Equality. She has been with the company since 2018 and previously held senior compliance roles at McKesson, VMware and Intel.

“Lori has already made a significant impact on our culture in her role as interim Chief Equality Officer,” President and Chief People Officer Brent Hyder said in the compamny's announcement. “She has a unique ability to build talent strategies guided by the voices of our employees, while influencing company-wide action. This makes her the best leader to push us even further into this next chapter.”

In a recent blog post, Castillo Martinez outlined her vision for championing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at the San Francisco-based company. Among her priorities are ensuring accurate representation among employees, focusing on employee experience, and designing a system that ensures promotions, talent reviews, and manager processes are also viewed through a DEI lens.

Salesforce’s most recent equality update revealed that the company has more than doubled the representation of Black men and women among its hires from 4.3% in July 2020, to 9.4% in July 2021. This growth comes as the company is on a mission to double the internal representation of Black leaders in its U.S. business and increase its representation of underrepresented minority leaders by 50% over the next two years.