• by Colin Kirkland , November 13, 2023

Salesforce, the marketing CRM company, has hired longtime executive Denise Dresser as the CEO of its team communications platform Slack. Dresser will be replacing Lidiane Jones, who has left the company after 10 months to become CEO of dating app Bumble.

Dresser is the third CEO of Slack since the company was acquired by Salesforce in 2020 for $27.7 billion. Her role as CEO is effective immediately, although Jones will stay on until the year's end to help Dresser with the transition.

Jones' move to Bumble will go into effect on January 2 of next year.

“Denise is an incredible business leader who has excelled at every level in her career at Salesforce,” Salesforce co-founder and chief executive Marc Benioff wrote on X on Monday.

Dresser has been at Salesforce for 12 years, “building mission-driven, high performing teams,” according to her company bio and LinkedIn profile. Dresser has held several executive positions at the company and serves on the Ad Council's board of directors.

Most recently, Dresser served as president of accelerated industries.

“Like her predecessor, [Dresser] has to walk the narrow line between keeping Slack independent, while finding ways to integrate it more tightly when it makes sense,” notes TechCrunch. “She also has to keep long-time employees happy, while hearing from customers and Salesforce execs about the direction of Slack.”

Some of Slack's most notable executives, including Slack founder Stewart Butterfield and Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, left the company in a span of two weeks in December 2022. Butterfield's departure resulted in Jones' promotion, and now Dresser's.