6.16.2008 - 11:32am ET

(CSRwire) EDISON,NY,. - June 16, 2008 - Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of San Francisco’s salesforce.com, which recently announced near-$1 billion results, has won CRO Magazine’s 2008 CEO of the Year Award. Benioff will accept the Award and offer the Keynote at the CRO Conference June 18 at the Marine’s Memorial Club in San Francisco.

In addition to Benioff's Award and Keynote, the CRO Conference will also feature a Keynote by sustainability software guru Amit Chatterjee, who is expected to announce a major set of new commitments by venture capital leaders to the corporate sustainability movement.Chatterjee was most recently SVP of SAP's Governance, Risk and Compliance software group, which also covered sustainability applications, and helped build that group into the industry’s largest.

Eight-year-old salesforce.com is one of America's fastest-growing technology companies. As company founder and CEO, Benioff is the visionary behind the "1/1/1 Model" in which companies give 1% of profits, 1% of equity and 1% of employee time back to their communities. Benioff authored The Business of Changing the World in 2006 in which 20 great business leaders show how to go beyond checkbook philanthropy to make a true difference. For his thought and action leadership in corporate responsibility and financial performance, CRO Magazine has named Marc Benioff its CEO of the Year (Middle Market). Benioff's CRO Conference Keynote will cover key elements of the trendsetting company's extraordinary results.

"As 2008 CEO of the Year, salesforce.com's Marc Benioff represents the ideal combination of leadership in corporate responsibility and financial performance," says CRO Magazine Publisher Jay Whitehead. "He has consistently demonstrated that a company can deliver stellar results to Wall Street while remaining committed to a 1/1/1 Model program to benefit the communities in which it resides. He is a great example for other CEOs, and as such deserves CRO Magazine's highest honor." The 2008 CEO of the Year (Middle Market, defined as companies with $100 million-$1 billion in revenues) is the only one of seven 2008 CEO of the Year Awards that will be presented by CRO Magazine at the CRO Conference in San Francisco June 18. The remaining six will be announced and presented September 10 at the CRO Conference in Chicago: Large Market (>$1 billion), Small Market (<$100 million), Service Provider/Compliance, Service Provider/Sustainability, Service Provider/CSR, Corporate Foundation, NGO (non-corporate), Social Entrepreneur.

The June 18 CRO Conference in San Francisco features other CR leaders such former White House Council on Environmental Quality and Asst. Secretary of the US Army Ray Clark on what the new White House will bring in Environment and Corporate Responsibility. Also featured are high tech CR leaders such as Dave Stangis from Intel, Tod Arbogast from Dell, and Marcy Lynn from Sun Microsystems, covering the lessons that high tech has for other industries. This session is just one of 10 headline-grabbing sessions at the CRO Conference at San Francisco's Marine's Memorial Club on June 18. Registration is limited to 220, and conference organizers urge attendees to register online soon at www.thecro.com/conferences.

For more details about the CRO Conference program, visit www.thecro.com/conferences, and for CRO's 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2008, the methodology and 'CRO' magazine, visit www.thecro.com.


About The CRO and Crossing Media LLC

CRO is the only membership media platform for Corporate Responsibility practitioners, and the professional service providers and non-profit influencers that serve them. The CRO publishes the 20,000-subscriber 'CRO' Magazine and 200,000+ subscriber TheCRO.com, bi-weekly e-newsletters, webinars, and produces the four-time-annual CRO Conferences. With over 100 members including leading companies Sara Lee, Amtrak, Eaton, IBM, Citigroup, Chubb Insurance, Mattel, Intel, Dell, Pepsi, Home Depot, Starbucks, Avon, Gap, State Street, Xerox, leading providers such as Deloitte, Baker & McKenzie, SAP, Hogan & Hartson, Edelman, Manning Selvage & Lee, Grant Thornton, Golin Harris, Ketchum, Cone, LRN, Integrity Interactive, and non-profits including Stanford University, Boston College, UCLA, and Harvard. Corporate membership information can be found at TheCRO.com, or by calling Jonathan Campbell at (732)-476-6160 ext 108.

The CRO is a Crossing Media LLC media platform. More information at www.CrossingMedia.com.

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