Brazilian takes charge of Slack after founder leaves

Brazilian executive Lidiane Jones will assume the position of CEO of the corporate communication application Slack. The position was occupied by the founder of the app, Stewart Butterfield, who announced this Monday (5) that he will leave Salesforce, which owns the platform, in January 2023.

“Today [segunda, 5] it’s a new and exciting day for me, for Slack, and for Salesforce. I am proud to be named the new CEO of Slack, receiving the baton from thoughtful and innovative founder Stewart Butterfield,” Lidiane wrote on social media.

“Thank you Stewart for what you’ve built and for trusting me with the most important role of my life. In short, there would be no Slack without Stewart. He has built an incredible company that, with a team built on humility and innovation, has redefined modern work.”

Born in São Paulo, Lidiane Jones has a degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan, in the United States, and has worked at companies such as Apple, Sonos and Microsoft. In the latter, she worked for almost 13 years, managing products such as Microsoft Office Shared Experiences, Enterprise Management and Azure Machine Learning, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Salesforce announced the purchase of Slack in December 2020 for US$ 27.7 billion (R$ 145 billion at current exchange rates). The agreement took place while the Covid-19 pandemic consolidated remote work.

Butterfield’s departure comes less than a week after Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor resigned. Taylor, who will also leave the company in January, was one of those responsible for the billionaire deal. Slack’s main competitor is Microsoft’s Teams.