When Brooke Eby was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, she knew the time would come when she would need to disclose her diagnosis to her employer, Salesforce. “I had no idea what to expect,” says Eby. “On a Zoom screen, you can’t really tell that anything’s going on. I just didn’t know how to approach it.” Eby landed on a LinkedIn post to break the news. “I didn’t know what my future would be with working; I didn’t know if they would want me to plan my transition out.”
Quite the opposite happened. The outpouring of support on the LinkedIn post was overwhelmingly positive. It caught the eye of Salesforce executives, and “it started making its way up the chain, and the C-suite started commenting, which was so intimidating,” says Eby. From there, the support caught fire. Her Salesforce colleagues decided to start The Levity Project, which had goals around donation and a company-wide movement challenge, as Eby was losing her mobility. “Before I knew it, people across the company were sending photos of them doing a workout with a banner with my name on it!”
Eby has since amassed almost 200,000 TikTok followers — her handle is limpbroozkit — where she advocates for ALS. She’s also building out resources for the ALS community. And she does this all with the support and financial backing of Salesforce, where she remains employed full-time. In fact, Salesforce executives invited Eby to speak at the quarterly company meeting and share her story. “That was the point that I knew Salesforce was in it now.”
There are countless horror stories of employers terminating the contracts of ill employees. While it’s illegal to fire an employee because of serious illness, many companies find creative ways to offboard employees with a medical condition. It’s refreshing to hear the opposite perspective, where a company stepped up to the plate to advocate for their employee’s cause.
Salesforce continues to support Eby. “First, the benefits saved me — it was just something I didn’t have to stress about, which isn’t a common experience. But in the last six months, as we’ve built out our ALS Together community, that’s really where they’ve gone above and beyond.” Eby is currently partnering with Slack to bring together the ALS patient community.
When asked what business and cultural drivers led Salesforce to stand out and provide support, Eby was thoughtful in her reply. “Something they’ve always advocated is the 1-1-1 model. The model is to give 1% of time, equity and technology. It’s always been ingrained in the culture that this business is the greatest platform for change. I think I provided a stage to showcase this ethos that’s been around for 25 years. There hasn’t been a face to something they have historically helped.” When asked to elaborate on the 1-1-1 model, Eby explained how the idea is to give 1% of one’s time toward volunteering efforts, 1% of one’s money to charitable events, and to give the Salesforce technology away for free to certain non-profits.
Salesforce continues to support Eby’s efforts to raise awareness and fundraising for ALS. Salesforce has also created an internal Slack channel called “ALS Force” with over 800 people ready to be deployed. “Knowing Salesforce has this model to give back, it’s enabling us to connect Salesforce volunteers with the organizations supporting ALS that need help.” Salesforce’s actions should be a model of how to support your employees — and how that support is mutually beneficial.