 My name is Michael Collins and I'm the Director General of the Institute of International and European Affairs and I'm very pleased to welcome you all this afternoon to this IEEA webinar. And we're absolutely delighted to be joined today this afternoon by Patrick Flynn, Vice President of Sustainability for Sales Tours and Patrick is going to speak to us about the adaptation of business models to achieve sustainability goals. Patrick has been really very good to join us and take time out of his schedule and the thing to speak to us particularly given the early hour of the morning in California where he's just told me the sun hasn't even come up yet. So thank you all the more for joining us in these circumstances but in any event Patrick will speak to us for as usual for about 15 to 20 minutes and then we will go to Q&A with you our audience and you'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom which I think you're all very familiar with at this stage and which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once Patrick has finished his presentation. A reminder that today's presentation and questions and answer are both on the record and please feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IEEA. Patrick as I said who as I said is Vice President of Sustainability for Salesforce which is a global leader in the customer relationship management and one of the fastest growing software companies in the world and at Salesforce Patrick defines and leads its environmental strategy prior to this role he has had important roles in green building design venture capital and sustainability for a data center co-location company. Patrick holds an MBA from MIT as well as a BS in engineering from Stanford University. So Patrick came to follow you 100,000 welcomes you're very welcome to Ireland and nice to see you good morning to you in California and thank you for joining us the floor is yours. Top of the morning to you as well thank you so much for having me here today thanks thank you Michael thank you to the IEEA really such an honor and such a pleasure to be here with you. I'll begin trying to share my screen here just confirm I'm doing that properly please and then you can see it. The I just again I want to start with a sense of gratitude. I'm honored that I'm even eligible to be speaking with with you all. I will plan to as Michael said set about 15 or 20 minutes of context both the global context as well as zooming in on the corporate context with a specific lens on what Salesforce is doing in sustainability and then I'm most looking forward to the Q&A session at the end so please as Michael said keep the questions coming in I'm really eager to have a dialogue and understand any way that I can help you or illuminate why we do what we do offer some advice and learn from each other again beginning with thank you it's I have to finish myself that I get to speak in situations like this really in truly such an honor. Let's start by zooming way out this the global context setting part of a conversation like this I think is necessary. There's no way to solve global challenges without taking a moment to zoom out and take a truly global view and some of what I'll share here at the beginning section will not be new to anybody but I think it helps us all enter into the right mindset. We are on a rock in the middle of space and on the stariest night that you can picture you were only looking at about one one hundred millionth of the stars in our galaxy alone and there are a hundred billion galaxies out there and yet in spite of all of that vastness we have no indication that there's any life anywhere but on this little speck and what an interesting time to be on this lifeboat in the middle of the darkness with a global pandemic and economic crisis and the climate crisis looming. Meanwhile we also have a social and inequality crisis and a crisis of leadership of the one hundred ten billion or so human souls who have ever lived. You and I happen to be here today alive conscious privileged and able to take part in trying to reshape the future for all life as we know it anywhere in the universe from here on out. We've got a lot of great work to do together. Now we also have a pretty good roadmap the the sustainable development goals our collective species wide to-do list for the coming decade and the objectives are quite clear 169 underlying metrics behind these 17 SDGs and yet if we examine them one of those initiatives stands out above every other and that is the climate crisis. It is the number one risk in terms of impact and number two in terms of likelihood on the World Economic Forum's annual global risks report of the 169 metrics that underlie those 17 SDGs. 154 are linked to climate action and that's an important distinction. Climate action is not just about the environment. Climate change and taking taking part to address climate change is a way to address inequality, a way to spur on the economy, a way to create human health and well-being, a way to support biodiversity and yes a way to deliver action against the claim the changing climate that we see around us and we're not doing a very good job yet. Currently we are on track for a 3.2 degree rise in temperature Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Every scientist out there would tell you that that is not a scenario that we want to see happen and so it's up to us in this critical moment in history to try to reshape things. As Ban Ki-moon said, climate change is the single greatest threat to a sustainable future but at the same time addressing the climate challenge presents a golden opportunity to promote prosperity, security and a brighter future for all. So again let's zoom in a little bit on how we're doing on that and you can see current policies here in the light blue place us into a 2.8 to 3.2 degree future. Optimistic pledges and policies place us a little bit better but we need a lot of more work to get to a 2.2 degree or ideally a 1.5 degree future. Let me share with you a bit of an animation here that puts it a little bit into context. If we had started declining emissions back in the year 2000 it would have taken only a 3% decline in order to achieve a 1.5 degree future, 3% decline in annual global emissions but emissions kept rising, we kept deteriorating our available climate budget and now we require about a 15% annual decline in global CO2 emissions to achieve that 1.5 degree pathway. I rule up some way to think about it as a 50% decline in annual global emissions by 2030, having those emissions again by 2040 and reaching net zero emissions by the mid-century and we know leaders need to move much faster. If we think about climate change sinks of CO2 emissions I find this diagram from drawdown quite powerful. We have in the center the atmosphere. On the left hand side the various sources of emissions from electricity production which gets a lot of focus but also food agriculture and land use, industry, transportation, buildings and other sources. We need to reduce the sources of greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible across the board. Those sources are generating more heat trapping gases than the sinks can capture and sequester. The two main sinks that we have doing great work year in, year out are our land-based sinks and ocean-based sinks here on the right hand side of the diagram. We also need to protect, support and create even more sinks in order to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as well. We are at a all of the above time for climate action, reducing sources, enhancing sinks, building partnerships in order to create that 1.5 degree future that we all want and that we all will share. Now what's the role of a company in addressing sustainability writ large and in particular addressing climate change? Well let's break down a company into some of the fundamental things that it does. It makes products or provides services and depending on the industry it's in there are levers, opportunities to create change to either reduce sources of emissions or enhance sinks. There's also the dimension in the center here of how that company operates. Everything from what it purchases in its supply chain, how it invests, what its philanthropic portfolio looks like and plenty of levers there particularly for reducing emissions if we zoom in on how it operates and where it operates. And then a very important lever right now especially with regards to creating systemic change is what a company stands for, what it communicates, what it says to and asks of other stakeholders around it. And as we move forward through this presentation I'll zoom in on that a little bit with regards to Salesforce. We are a company that is motivated by our values. Our values are trust, customer success, innovation and equality. And when we think about approaching a topic like climate change or creating change in the world we begin with our values. And I'm incredibly proud of where Salesforce is on its own sustainability journey. Let me tell you a little bit of that context. So every day every customer is on a carbon neutral cloud from Salesforce. We will hit 100% renewable energy only from new renewable energy that we or our suppliers on our behalf have helped bring to the grid. We have about 75% of our global real estate certified to the highest levels of green building standards including our office in Dublin. One out of five employees is part of our green team that we call Earthforce. That's 10,000 people globally doing the many amazing things that add up to really big impact. And we've advanced our transparency to the investor community quite a long way integrating environmental social and governance topics and metrics into our public filings. By the numbers we can see that for us data centers present a very large source of our scope one and scope two emissions along with business travel, offices and employee commuting. We have programs in place to mitigate, reduce, avoid and also bring renewable energy and carbon credits into the picture in order to achieve the goals that we showed earlier. And yet at the scale that Salesforce operates Planet Earth will not notice. We at the same time that I'm so proud of where we are on our own journey we know that we need to take that opportunity provided by the great work that we've done over many years and find ways to catalyze systemic change. What we think about is beginning with walking the walk. This is what provides any stakeholder from an individual to a country to accompany the credibility in order to have an expert point of view on a topic like climate change but it has to continue on from there given the scale of what we are trying to do. We need to walk the walk to a point where we can build a movement inspiring others and showing them how to follow alongside us and then use that movement to create systemic change at the scale that Planet Earth might actually notice. And the scale that Planet Earth might actually notice is about 10,000 times bigger than Salesforce's own emissions. That's how much bigger that domino is at the end of the chain that we're trying to kick off. We stand upon a foundation of excellence given the great work that we've done over years but then we look to stakeholders around us in order to drive that systemic change. Our customers, our suppliers, governments and the investor community and over the next few minutes I'll zoom in on each of those stakeholder groups and tell you a little bit more about what we're doing with each of those. So the investor community, one of the biggest levers we have around us if Salesforce can have even a small influence over reallocating capital flows we can create big change for climate action. We were proud to see Larry Fink and BlackRock step forward and really underscore the importance of businesses standing for something and improving the state of the world and also the importance of the task force for climate related financial disclosures, TCFD framework as a way to make sure stakeholders around businesses understand the trusted metrics that show whether a company is taking action or not. Our CFO Mark Hawkins here who you see in the center of the photo at the New York Stock Exchange covering up my own face right behind his elbow is a great champion inside of Salesforce and has spurred us on the journey of making sure that our environmental data is investor grade enabled to and allows us to be a leader in environmental social and governance reporting. One of the ways we do that is with the Salesforce platform. Earlier this year we launched Salesforce Sustainability Cloud. It's a platform for any of our customers or anybody who is not yet a customer to use the tools that have been built by Salesforce over 20 years that we've brought into a purposeful product that takes the form of allowing customers to take climate action. It's really focused on two things. One is the annual greenhouse gas footprinting process. You can see that depicted in the large screen here on this image. What we've created is a very organized single point of record single source of truth for any stakeholder in a business to bring their environmental data to a place of trust and then we've coupled that with analytics and data visualization which you see on the mobile device here that allows the executive audiences within a company who wants to take climate action allows them to have the data that they need and that they expect in order to take action. One of the ways that a company can take action is to invest in and focus on nature-based solutions. Let me tell you a little bit about that. Earlier this year around the same time we launched Sustainability Cloud, Salesforce helped the World Economic Forum stand up 1T.org and initiative that hopes to bring together all of the many stakeholders around the world who are focused on nature-based solutions and bringing greater focus to tree conservation, restoration, and tree planting. An incredible and important part of the climate action portfolio and upon that launch we also made our own corporate commitment which is to see 100 million trees planted, restored, conserved over the next decade. I mentioned our supply chain as well as one of the great sources of leverage for change around Salesforce. We have a 1.5 degree approved science-based target from the science-based target initiative and one of the components of that target is a scope 3 supply chain engagement goal that says suppliers representing 60% of our supplier-based emissions will set science-based targets of their own by 2024. To me that sort of chain reaction set off by us and other companies alongside us who are looking to their supply chains to try to motivate them to create science-based targets is one of the greatest sources of inspiration in the climate corporate climate movement right now. We are day by day seeing more companies committing to and setting science-based targets and as that coalition grows the ability to influence supply chain members collectively grows with it and day by day we're seeing more and more momentum behind that initiative and Salesforce hopes to the extent we can to help push that movement forward and help others along their journey. Another pillar of achieving that 10,000x leveraged influence for climate action is in government affairs and public policy and when we think about our government affairs public policy priorities regarding climate action they come in three forms. One is reducing greenhouse gas emissions broadly the next is decreasing the carbon intensity of the grids where we operate and the third is increasing market access to clean and renewable energy and we've taken what is a very values driven values oriented company in Salesforce and worked in close partnership with our government affairs team both in the United States and internationally in order to try to lend our voice and lend our support to the initiatives that can achieve these goals and as we zoom in on Europe we've made a bunch of good progress and good advances recently as well we joined the CLG recently I'm quite proud of that we hosted Mark Carney in a dialogue with the Salesforce employees recently as well and I'm proud to say Salesforce with about 160, 150 other companies backed the largest ever UN CEO effort to request that the build back better components of stimulus recovery take place in the EU and globally. What's ahead for Salesforce? Just a little bit of a preview of some of the things we've committed to or are working on as we zoom as we look forward again this goal to see 100 million trees conserved or restored over the next decade new commitments within our real estate continuing to lead the geographies where we operate to a one and a half degree future focusing in on water as well with our improved water leadership commitment under the we mean business protocol a 1.5 degree science-based target that we mentioned including a supply chain component trying to bring others along with us on that journey focusing on clean and renewable energy we expect that we will hit 100% renewable energy in FY 22 again from new renewable energy that we are able to bring to the grid and I think one of the most interesting things is again Salesforce sustainability cloud because in this climate emergency every stakeholder can focus on what they do best for climate action that happens at the individual level we need artists to make art for climate action we need lawyers to to file lawsuits for climate action and we need companies to to tether their unique core competency to climate action for Salesforce that is digital tools that help our customers transform their business we've done that successfully through macro changes like the move to mobile social cloud iot ai and with Salesforce sustainability cloud we can deliver digital tools to help your company your organization transform in the face of climate action and so that one to me is a place where our 150 000 plus customers can find their own superpower for addressing climate change and I'm really excited to see what happens there so thank you for allowing me a few minutes to share some of the context and our point of view and our progress where we are headed here at Salesforce I'm thrilled to be with you this this afternoon and look forward to the discussion ahead well thank you very much Patrick for that stimulating inspiring indeed presentation just maybe just to get the ball rolling if I may and and would I wish him to be overtly political in any way not inviting you to be so I mean clearly you are determined to be in the vanguard of as a company of sustainability and achieving the ambitious goals that you you outlined there and I suppose two questions one is what would actually prevent you from doing so what are the huge obstacles in your way and the second one where it maybe gets a little more political is how frustrating is it that perhaps at federal level in the United States that you know there's a disalignment or a non-alignment between maybe the kind of ambition that you're articulating there and perhaps the view at a federal level great thank you yeah you know in terms of in terms of obstacles I think one of the biggest one of the biggest challenges is trying to reconcile the urgency of climate change you see something like 15 percent global annual emissions declines no amount of corporate incremental sustainability progress is going to deliver that even if we snapped our fingers and every company in the world was focused and motivated on taking their own steps forward bit by bit so over over the past few decades that more incremental focus on sustainability has been extremely relevant but now given how much change we need and how fast the the challenge that we face is trying to take a take what we have learned and use that to try to catalyze bigger more systemic change as quickly as possible and I think for for those in my position in corporate sustainability that mindset shift of trying just to look for bigger opportunities that can deliver impact far far bigger than the four walls of the company is a new more difficult more challenging challenge more challenging set of strategies with less direct control where it's much more about influencing others and and so I think I think the barrier is really trying to reconcile what a given corporate sustainability program can do with the demands of the planet and then if I think about the the US context and the federal context the there is some some silver lining here you know the the same day that the federal government here announced that we would be withdrawing from the Paris agreement hundreds of US businesses and now a movement that's thousands of stakeholders strong stepped in to say that we will uphold the ideals of the Paris agreement and so my my sincere hope is that what we've seen is a surge of state and local we certainly have seen that a surge of individual and corporate action that will in the end when we look back really have provided a boost you know in terms of awakening stakeholders who need to take action here thank you Patrick maybe just a related question that's just come in at least in part from a colleague a former colleague of mine David Dunnehu who of course was our ambassador for the United Nations and very much instrumental in you know the climate change achievements there over the last the period of his term as ambassador he says congratulations to Salesforce for its commitment and leadership on SDG climate and ESG he says some fear that the huge economic impact our shock of COVID will halt the momentum and towards a sustainable world others see the SDGs as more relevant than ever and say quote unquote building back must be based on them where do you start yeah it's a great question and I imagine this is top of mind for many so we might spend a little bit of time here on the intersection you know between between COVID and corporate sustainability let me give it given that we might have a few passes at it let me let me first begin by maybe speaking to it at the highest level there are there are some great and helpful parallels between the COVID-19 health crisis and the climate crisis for example globally collectively all of us each of us is getting a crash course in system dynamics the ideas of that that in the case of COVID actions today may take a couple of weeks before we start to see the impact and in the case of climate change actions today what we do and do not do might take a couple of years or a couple of decades to come to fruition a crash course in in understanding the science exponential curves trusting experts and so that I think as we look forward we'll provide this global collective capability for understanding a complex system with delays embedded within it and I think that's quite a good thing we're also seeing front and center just how interconnected we are you know think back to that image of of the blue marble sitting there in space we know just how interdependent we are and in the case of a global pandemic that any one stakeholder's success relies on the success of the stakeholders around them and certainly that is no you know that is truer than ever with the case of climate change one global atmosphere and and absolutely with climate change the unfortunate situation that those with the least usually are the ones who suffer the most so the net of it I think is these lessons learned that will help us in in in addressing the SDGs and in addressing climate action long term we we need to and we have in front of us a multi-year multi-decade adventure ahead to conquer these goals and to create a prosperous future and what I hope is that the COVID-19 circumstances although tragic and unwanted have provided us with some really valuable lessons that will stick with us in terms of our our sort of global collective action capability over the long term now I think the other the other thing to think about here is some strategies need to be accelerated and some strategies need to be decelerated in the in the face of COVID-19 the back in the back at the launch of the UN emissions gap assessment last October or November one of the one of the lines that stood out to be most was in order to achieve a one and a half degree future we need rapid far reaching and unprecedented changes in every aspect of society that's from about a year ago back in October before COVID-19 hit and now unexpectedly and tragically we are seeing rapid far reaching and unprecedented changes in every aspect of society and we need to make the most of this moment of crisis and think about it as an opportunity to reorient and indeed to build back better this is exactly the kind of change that we need to see we just need to make sure we we intervene and make sure that we don't build back the same but build back in a direction that we want it's excellent so building back better is really but but but me out of this current tragedy out of this current crisis there is at least an opportunity to do that and to potentially achieve that yeah yeah absolutely yeah so one just a question here from Patrick Paul watch who's the director of UCD University College Dublin one of our the biggest universities here in Ireland Center for Sustainable Development Studies he says excellent talk talk he says is the sales force sustainability cloud only for the corporate only for corporate operations he says in theory a tracker on consumer expenditure on government our government spending on government spending would also induce the systemic changes outlined yeah great question and thank you i'll tell you a little bit about the origin story for sales force sustainability cloud as a way to answer that one so once a year a company does its greenhouse gas accounting and it is about as boring as it gets in my opinion it's the equivalent of doing corporate taxes except instead of having a tax expert do it usually the corporate sustainability team assigns it to the newest person on the team because it is really equivalent to looking in the rear view mirror and looking at what has transpired rather than looking forward and trying to change the future and anybody who gets into corporate sustainability wants to look to the future and change things and does not want to be doing the paperwork to understand what transpired in the past for sales force even up to a few years ago it took us six months to do that process gathering utility bills and data from the different parts of our operations applying emissions factors stitching all that together and coming up with the metrics that we need we set out to do that process better inspired by our cfo who told us that we need to make our environmental data look a lot more like our financial data and so we we looked around at all different tools to do it and the sales force technology platform emerged as the right solution what we have with the sales force platform is equivalent to the building blocks the lego pieces in order to assemble new capability and those lego pieces have been built over 20 years of r&d and product development for sales cloud service cloud marketing cloud and the other tools that you all know so so well from the sales force portfolio we brought those tools together and in the very first time we used sales force sustainability cloud internally it took that six month process down to six weeks and the important change there beyond the time back to looking to the future was that we were able to um gather the data in time to place it into our 10k the the annual sec public filing for the company and have um an integration of our environmental data with our financial data now um i i share that anecdote because although it was built and is currently directed at the corporate sustainability user the flexibility of that sales force platform is tremendous and what we have in the most generic sense is a tool that allows any stakeholder to take a trusted data through the process of gathering it analyzing it creating feedback on it getting it internally reviewed externally reviewed and to a place of the utmost trust and quality so if we think about taking that tool that's that capability that's currently focused on the corporate customer adapting it to things other than carbon emissions or adapting it to the needs of a city government um is actually quite easy thanks to the flexibility that sales force platform okay very good just as a matter of interest uh patrick um um driving this ambition of sales force at the corporate level are you reflecting i suppose the ambition um where is the ambition coming from is it coming from within sales force or is it your customers and shareholders who are driving this ambition or is it a combination of both yeah that's a great question um 20 years ago um sales force was founded on the on the idea of being a different kind of company and one of the ways that that took place was integrating philanthropy into the business from day one we started with the one one one model where one percent of product one percent of equity and one percent of employee time would go to non-profit causes around the world and i mentioned that because what that has done is create a culture in the company that truly understands business is the greatest platform for change and so it has started from the very top down from day one to today and and as i in my work within the company meet new stakeholders across the business and come to them um looking for ways to improve the state of the world every single day i am blown away by how consistently that feeling and those values are shared with the employees at sales force so i i would say it starts there for sure but all the while we are seeing so many other stakeholders highly motivated to see business achieve um great positive impact in the world the employees that are coming to sales force especially younger employees we know they are highly motivated to work for mission driven companies the investor community we know is highly motivated to see greater environmental social and governance data and certainly in environmental social and governance performance come out of the companies that they are investing in our communities across the board stakeholders are recognizing that values create value and that there is something really to be said for doing business with values aligned stakeholders and companies and how typical would that be patrick i mean in the say the california ecosystem i suppose you know what sales force is doing would be um there'd be many other companies seeking to adopt adopt leadership positions on the on on the on these issues but i mean how universal is this kind of sentiment or this kind of ambition within the american business ecosystem i mean i know you're a global company but obviously california tends to give leadership on so many things how far ahead of you are are you from the rest of your your cohort has worked in other states in the united states right um we are we are right there alongside so many other leading companies it's it's one of the greatest sources of inspiration um in my line of work you know when i connect with a peer at a different company um in a lot of ways we consider ourselves on the same team trying to achieve the same sorts of objectives to improve the state of the world and i think you know you're pointing out that definitely we see west coast us and technology companies quite a lot taking taking the lead we've seen just this week apple microsoft amazon stepping forward with new climate leadership um announcements and it's it's it's it's just so inspiring um and we're also seeing leaders from other sectors as well you've got of course you know patagonia and vf corporation um mars and danon and you know so many so many companies that are um leading that it's it's not just about west coast or tech sector it is really um the the leading companies who know that values and a focus on values a focus on stakeholders um creates value for the company okay here's a question from alistair mac meneman from zurick insurance he says i love the idea about how sales force has mobilized an internal green team he wants to know can you please share more about this sure the irish team is it yeah yeah that's right that's right the irish the irish earth's force chapter is is double yeah so we we call it earth force and the way we've done it is um really i'll describe a little bit of the governance in case that's helpful in in in the ideas of trying to stand one of these up um the way it takes shape is it's local chapters within each major office for sales force and we actually also have an earth force chapter for all of our remote workers that we call earth force at home and those chapters are more or less autonomous self-governing we have we have elections um people take positions of leadership in those local chapters and then we have some degree of global oversight um julie morad who who is a fantastic member of our team and and based in london helps with some of that global oversight and what that takes the form of is really just trying to achieve some sort of consistency across those different chapters so tangible examples of things like in a particular month there may be a theme that that each of the chapters tries to engage upon and those chapters themselves will do things everything from bring in speakers to host a movie speak movie screening volunteer events all of those require the ability to be in person in gatherings so some of that i'm sure is on hold we've pivoted a lot to digital education and engagement but but hopefully that helps with the the colleague from from xeric insurance to think about how to inspire very good uh just a second another question here from um from durval o brian from air grid and she says um really great presentation of course he says sales force really seems to have embedded sustainability across every aspect of its business i'm interested in finding out how difficult or easy it has been to engage on sustainability across the supply chain does sales force put any supports in place to assist suppliers along the sustainability journey yeah interesting um definitely so you know part one absolutely what what we set out to do is embed sustainability throughout the business and i've mentioned the the benefits of a really focused culture on creating positive impact that certainly helped us do that we have stakeholders around the business who we work with as trusted partners in order to enact the change that we're looking for some of those stakeholders sit within the supply chain team and when it comes to supplier engagement we've got a few different ways that we do it and it depends a little bit on who the supplier is um what sort of product and what the relationship is with them but what we aim to do is help all of them achieve the next steps on their sustainability journey by sharing with them what we have done and and and the lessons we have learned giving them some of the tools that they need in order to gather um and communicate the data back to us so one example is over the over the first quarter um and and into the second so over the past few months um we've held webinars to talk about supply chain collaboration and supply chain engagement um with other peer companies in hopes of spurring them along their journey some of the greatest supply chain successes we've had actually come in our real estate group um we know um employees are more productive healthier happier in built environments with a high degree of health and wellness healthy materials environmental sustainability and so we've provided scorecards and toolkits to the vendors that that um that we work with for building out our office spaces to help guide them on their own journey of product improvement to make sure that what they offer to us meets our needs and advances both of us forward on our sustainability journey good um a lot of the things we're talking about issues obviously which are a major preoccupation in the in the in the first world if i may describe it as such and you know in the world of that that we inhabit what is sales forces uh perspective our kind of role does it see itself playing in the developing world i mean uh over and beyond the kind of the developed world that that is california that is uh the europe that we we inhabit i mean there's a whole world out there obviously which is full of challenges in relation to development where does sales force come into all of that or what level of ambition do you have in that field yeah that's a great question you know i think it's it's important to begin the answer with the fact that climate change in particular has been um created so much by the more developed economies and the worst impacts are going to be felt and are being felt even today by the developing economies of the world there's there's a deep obligation that i feel for us to take action on behalf of others um when it comes to our our global operations where we are as you say a global company operations all around the world working with customers of every industry every geography every shape and size to help them transform their businesses our um Salesforce.org team works with 40 000 NGOs scattered around the world addressing various causes across the social and the environmental landscape and those those NGOs use Salesforce at significantly discounted or even free prices so we create tremendous impact with our tools in the hands of the NGO community and last but not least when we think about our carbon credit our carbon offset projects we look globally to the locations where we can create environmental impact today and change people's lives today around the world to achieve to help achieve some of our outcomes that we discussed like providing carbon neutral cloud services to all of our customers offsetting all of our business travel and employee commuting and all of our scope one and scope two emissions. Here's a question from Nancy O'Neill who's one of our colleagues in the institute she says and what behaviors are Salesforce employees encouraged to undertake at an individual level so we've gone from the global now to very personal very individual level in their today work re you mentioned business travel and staff commuting and two contributors you mentioned as being responsible for some of Salesforce's emissions. Yeah you know we have a we have a learning platform that we call Trailhead and anybody on this on this call can can look for sustainability lessons on Trailhead and some of those are focused on these sorts of individual actions that any employee can take both related to their work life but also on a more personal family life basis we're also more and more focused on the home environment now since so many of our employees are working more from home than ever before during these unique circumstances you know at the home you've you've got opportunities for energy efficiency and thinking about swapping out light bulbs for LEDs I'm sure many of you are far advanced on that part of the journey. One of the one of the ones that often is overlooked is our dietary choices so reducing food waste and switching more and more to a plant-based diet is one of the biggest levers that any of us has on an individual basis in order to create environmental change. Yeah I know individual companies and maybe Salesforce themselves although I haven't heard it have announced kind of indefinite working from home arrangements maybe even over and beyond COVID have you as a company adopted a policy yet or a position in terms of what the future is going to be in terms of the balance to be achieved between working from home and working from the the the previous environment. You're right some some companies have said more of an indefinite stance. We haven't set a firm policy any direction yet at Salesforce I know the team is looking very closely at what this new work might look like what the new modes of work might look like and without a doubt it will be different than what it once was. I personally would anticipate more people working from home and remotely than we saw before and from an environmental sustainability perspective it's one of these places where the interventions should happen sooner rather than later so we are looking at policies related to air travel in order to understand how we might do that differently when things resume back to some sort of new normal. I think employee commuting too is a very important one. We know that mass transit is definitely the most environmentally friendly safest most economical way to get to and from the work in home office. However in the face of a global pandemic I can imagine some rebound where people may be a little bit reserved about stepping back onto a bus or a train with other with other people. So this is a moment where we need to make sure we get those mass transit modes of transportation right and make sure they are safe but also communicate the benefits and the safety of those modes of transportation. It's a great time to think about re-greening cities and making them more walkable and more cyclable for commuters as we go forward. So those are the sorts of intervention moments that this window of opportunity has created for us to not just go back to what it once was to certainly not go back to something that's worse than what it once was but to try to set in place the structures that will make us happier healthier and more vibrant. Excellent. Just a question here from Etha McQuillan who's I think she's from our department of Ministry of Transport here in Dublin. She said thanks for the presentation. She says in terms of tripartite understanding of sustainable sustainable development what do you think are the key messages to focus on in moving the understanding of sustainable development away from it being a purely environmental construct especially in terms of public policy development. Yeah thanks Eva. I think we have a chance here to communicate the interconnectedness of all of the sustainable development goals and the link between environment social and economy a healthy economy can only rest on a healthy society and a healthy society can only rest upon a healthy environment and we are seeing that interconnectedness in the very stark change between what what things look like globally last April versus what they looked like globally this April and I think there's a tremendous opportunity to use that contrast in order to help people understand just how interconnected all of this is with a health crisis we have an economic slowdown with an economic slowdown we have cleaner air cleaner water birds returning to the cities that you can hear and certainly the environmental benefits of the economic slowdown are only so good as to point out that the economy is disconnected from our environmental outcomes right now and we need to realign economic and environmental in a way and social of course in a way that advances in any one of these areas advances the other as well. Okay then maybe just coming towards the end here now Patrick and just maybe if I could just bring it back maybe to the times that are in the United States and and without again wishing to invite you into kind of a fractious political terrain or anything like that but obviously you're in the midst of an election campaign now you know what was destined to be kind of a heavily fought campaign and the issues that we're talking about here I mean to what extent would you ever anticipate that there will be issues within the campaign itself and will be issues that would differentiate between the candidates and you know and whether whether they're likely to get any profile as a consequence you know in the course of the campaign and as part of the future administration for example should there be change? Yeah good question I think one really one bright spot here is is how much we are seeing climate show up in the U.S. polling as an issue that really matters to a lot of voters so I would predict that it is absolutely a component of the elections that we have ahead over the next few months differentiating candidates of course the presidential but also all of the many other state and local elections that will be taking place over the next four months or so here in the United States. The values and the objectives of creating a healthier more economically prosperous future for citizens of the United States and their children should be and I hope is something we can completely all agree upon and my my sincere hope would be that we are entering into a a phase where climate action sustainability broadly focusing on equality and human health and the environment really are what motivate a lot of voters going to the polls especially given all of the chances they've had to see that things have been off track over the last time here and try to try to see them all remotivated to really vote and and use the power of the vote to create the future that we want and that we all share. Well on that note Patrick I think we're going to draw proceedings to an end we're just coming up on on the half hour and we're spot on time and in our usual efficient way at the IIEA but just to say thank you thank you for sharing those inspirational thoughts with us not just in relation to what Salesforce itself is doing as more broadly in terms of the global the global context presented the global context the global challenges for us in Ireland it's I suppose it's very reassuring to know that there is a good Irish man in charge of such a green agenda in California it's something where we're deeply mindful of that of course the Irish are everywhere and not least in Salesforce and secondly just to you know to thank you for obviously to to do wish you well in your endeavor 15 years ago I'm sure a job like this didn't quite exist I'm not even sure 10 years ago it existed so bringing it from where it was then a very low base to the level of ambition that you now represent is something that's very very encouraging and we commend it I salute you along with every other individual and corporate out there who is seeking to achieve the same aims oh well thank you so much we I truly hope this was helpful to those who were able to attend I would love to use this as a springboard for greater conversation and collaboration we have a lot of work ahead of us I'm highly motivated to do that and none of us can do it alone the the only thing of leadership here is leadership in terms of collaboration there will not be any single leader just a bunch of people like me and a bunch of companies like Salesforce who are hoping to follow their values and improve the state of the world thank you very much Patrick and we'd like to invite you back on some future occasion when maybe you can tell us the progress that's been made in the meantime so thank you very much and good morning to you in California enjoy the rest of the day thank you all very much we'll see you on the next IE webinar thank you very much