Corporate event marketers will gather in Toronto for CEMA Summit 2026 in August.
Ebony Beckwith is no stranger to the complex, fast-moving world of business events. The executive coach, founder, and CEMA Summit 2026 keynote speaker spent more than a decade at Salesforce. In her years at the prominent tech company, she served as chief business officer, CEO of the charitable Salesforce Foundation, and chief of staff to Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO. These roles also gave her an insider perspective on Dreamforce, the tech company’s San Francisco–based annual meeting.
Ebony Beckwith
When she takes the stage in Toronto for CEMA Summit — which will take place Aug. 9–11 at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel — Beckwith will offer insights from her career at Salesforce as well as what she has learned as the founder of her own company, Framework, a leadership advisory firm. Whether she is helping a new tech venture scale its workforce or advising mid-career sales professionals who want to reinvent themselves, she brings a people-first approach to the table.
Convene reached out to Beckwith for a sample of her CEMA Summit keynote presentation and to find out more about how her career has sharpened her connections to business events and the people working behind the scenes to make them successful.
Your CEMA keynote talk is called “Rise: Leading at Every Level.” Can you walk us through what you’ll share and how it will help attendees be more strategic in how they approach their event portfolios?
Rise: Leading at Every Level is part personal testimony, part practical playbook. It draws on what I actually experienced navigating the C-suite, including what it took to earn influence, build credibility, and lead at the highest levels inside a global organization.
The through line is intention. Hard work and results matter, but the leaders who rise consistently are deliberate about how they build visibility, relationships, and trust. That does not happen by accident. It requires the same focus and rigor that people in this industry bring to producing world-class events.
CEMA’s audience already knows how to execute at a high level. My goal is to give them a clear way to apply that same discipline to their own careers, so they leave with something they can act on, not just something that felt good in the room.
You spent 14 years at Salesforce in a variety of roles, including chief business officer. Can you share one or two of the biggest lessons you took away from your time at the company and how they inform the way you show up as a speaker, consultant, and coach?
Real decisions rarely happen in the [internal] meeting. They happen in the conversations before it, in the relationships that exist outside of it, and in the follow-through after everyone has moved on. When you operate at the executive level, you learn to pay attention to all three. That understanding shapes how I work with clients. I help them see the full picture, not just the visible surface of how organizations move.
The second lesson is that no leader, regardless of title or tenure, should try to navigate complexity alone. I was deliberate about building a personal board of advisors: people who knew me, challenged me, and told me the truth. Not sponsors in the transactional sense, but genuine thought partners. I ask every client I work with to build that same circle. The higher you go, the fewer people will give you honest feedback. You have to build for that reality on purpose.
What role do you see live events playing in the broader tech industry?
Live events are an opportunity for companies to build community through storytelling and memorable experiences. Events give companies a chance to showcase their core values and build brand loyalty. Customers want to see the real, human side of technology. As the world becomes more digital, the power of what happens IRL [in real life] becomes increasingly more important. At Salesforce, we considered Dreamforce our family reunion and a place for customers to connect, learn, and transform. I believe live events are uniquely positioned to do this in a way no email or podcast can.
You founded Framework, a leadership and culture advisory that helps organizations to “make the invisible visible — to decode culture, clarify strategy, and build alignment that drives both performance and people.” Can you give us an example or two of how making the invisible visible pays off in terms of either measurable ROI or a more forward-leaning company culture that embraces diversity of thought?
Most of the problems I see are not strategy problems. They are clarity problems: What is not being said, what people assume everyone already understands.
I had a client who had been passed over for a promotion … twice. She was well-regarded and her results were strong. But every time things got tense, she went quiet. Leadership saw it as disengagement. She had no idea that’s how she was coming across. Once we named it, she adjusted and was promoted in the next round.
Most people don’t know that’s happening until someone tells them.
For Toronto, I just want to have an honest conversation. This industry is demanding and the people in it often put everyone else first. I want them to leave with something useful for themselves.
Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s digital managing editor
