Salesforce Executive Leads with a Beginner’s Mind

This article is part of our Women and Leadership special report to coincide with global events in March celebrating the achievements of women. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Clara Shih, 42, is among a handful of women worldwide leading the development and deployment of generative artificial intelligence for business. (Generative AI ‘learns’ patterns from training data and then creates something new and original). As CEO of Salesforce AI, she leads the research, development and market launch of the company’s AI products.

Salesforce is the world’s largest provider of customer relationship management software that allows companies to track and manage customer information and interactions. But despite its market dominance, the company has seen some turmoil lately. In 2023 and 2024, Salesforce laid off more than 10 percent of its employees and underwent a series of management changes, including the departure of its co-CEO, Bret Taylor.

Ms. Shih has been at the forefront of society’s digital transformations over the past twenty years. She has two master’s degrees, one in computer science from Stanford University and the other in Internet studies from the University of Oxford.

In 2006, she joined Salesforce as a product manager in the newly created AppExchange team and a year later created a social business application on Facebook (Face-Force, later renamed Faceconnecter), which allowed Salesforce users to integrate their Facebook network with their CRM contacts. . The company decided not to develop it as a product, but Ms. Shih realized that social media was transforming the business world.

She published a bestseller: ‘The Facebook era”, in 2009 and left Salesforce to co-found Hearsay Social – now Hearsay Systems – with a friend from Stanford. Hearsay allows financial services and insurance companies to use social media and text messaging in a manner that complies with industry regulations. In mid-2020, she stepped down as CEO to become Hearsay’s chairman and in January 2021, she rejoined Salesforce as CEO of Service Cloud. In May 2023, Ms. Shih was appointed head of Salesforce AI.

You were born in Hong Kong and emigrated with your family to Akron, Ohio, when you were four. How has the immigrant experience influenced your professional and personal development?

As an immigrant to Akron, I felt like an outsider for years, and my family started all over again. My parents have both changed careers. My father had been a math professor in Hong Kong. When we first arrived in Ohio he was shoveling snow for $5 an hour. He eventually became an electrical engineer. My mother was an artist and art teacher who went back to school to become a special education teacher. Seeing their work ethic and ability to embrace reinvention had a profound impact on me. It has taught me to always have a beginner’s mind, to embrace self-reinvention.

What about being a woman? You’ve said that you were often the only woman in the room, both in your engineering classes and as CEO.

I became accustomed to being underestimated, as women and minorities often are. I try to look at difficult situations as positive in some way because it’s easy to fall into the trap and feel like a victim. I have reframed “the only woman” or “the only person of color” as something that I am instead very proud of and feel a great responsibility for, because I stand on the shoulders of the women of color who came before me.

Your urge to perform and innovate started early. At seventeen you worked as a computer programmer at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; While at Stanford University, you founded a nonprofit organization for underserved youth. Where does that drive come from?

I have always felt immense gratitude and a sense of purpose from my time in America. One of my earliest memories is when we left Hong Kong. My grandmother, who we saw every day, encouraged us to go, even though she stayed behind and knew she wouldn’t see us again for a long time. She hugged all four of us and told us we were going to the land of our dreams that would come true. She sent us away for a better life, and that has stayed with me.

You co-founded Hearsay Social and served as CEO for 11 years. What did you get out of that experience?

The importance of having a ‘beginner’s mind’. Scaling a fast-growing startup means constantly reinventing yourself and the company.

I became very good at hiring people and much better at delegating. I burned out at Hearsay because there were no boundaries. I was even working in the delivery room. Now, I say no to 95 percent of the things that come my way.

That gives me the time and mental energy to focus on the 5 percent that really matters.

Salesforce’s AI technology is called Einstein and is embedded in all of the company’s products. For example, it can craft pitches for sales prospects or suggest a response to resolve a customer support issue. What do you do as CEO of Salesforce AI?

I lead my team in building the frontier of AI products.

I work closely with all of our general managers, including the CEOs of Slack and Tableau, and the general managers of Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, as we remake our products to be AI first. I also work with our sales, marketing and customer service teams to help customers safely deploy generative AI.

Safety and security are thorny issues in AI. How do you see your role in ensuring that this technology is developed and used in a way that is ethical and responsible?

I feel a huge sense of personal responsibility in creating AI that is trusted. One of the products we have developed is the Einstein trust layer — it masks sensitive information, does not store confidential or personally identifiable information, and provides toxicity filters to prevent the sharing of inappropriate, harmful, or inaccurate content. AI will transform employment, just as the internet was. I do worry about it to a healthy degree, but I am an action-oriented person, so serving in this role gives me a great platform to educate others, including members of Congress, CEOs and our customers.