Monica Langley
Monica Langley is a leadership & strategy expert, advisor to NYSE-listed CEOs and tech giant Salesforce, bestselling author of business nonfiction, former award-winning writer for The Wall Street Journal, network TV news analyst and ex-corporate attorney.
Langley served as the Executive Vice President of Global Strategy for Salesforce for six years in a pivotal role on the management team in San Francisco. She collaborated closely with founder/chair/CEO Marc Benioff during a transformative period for Salesforce, marked by a four-fold increase in employees to 80,000, a remarkable tripling in stock price, and the company's selection to the Dow 30 (replacing Exxon).
Since leaving the mega-cap firm full-time in 2023 and returning to her Southern roots, Langley continues to advise Salesforce, as well as CEOs of publicly-listed companies.
For 27 years, Langley was an award-winning Senior Writer for The Wall Street Journal in New York City and Washington DC. She specialized in behind-the-scenes, news-making narratives of corporate crises and sagas. Langley gained wide recognition for her impactful page-one profiles of prominent figures, including CEOs, billionaires, and presidential candidates.
Langley created and hosted "The Inflection Point," a YouTube show of CEO conversations that often garnered 1Million views per episode, which ran during Covid. For three decades, Langley has been a frequent commentator on broadcast and cable networks, including a paid senior analyst on CNN during the 2016 presidential campaign. She’s also a seasoned and sought-after public speaker.
In her early career, Langley practiced law for corporate clients facing legal, regulatory, reputational and succession issues. She is a member of the District of Columbia, Tennessee and U.S. Supreme Court bars. Langley served for several years as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and Columbia University.
Langley is currently at work on a book of business nonfiction. Her two previous business books were NYT nonfiction bestsellers: "Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World...and Then Nearly Lost It All" (Simon & Schuster) and "Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change" (with Marc Benioff, Penguin Random House).
Langley received a B.S. summa cum laude from the University of Tennessee and a J.D. cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center. In her four-decade career, Langley has won multiple journalism and business awards, including the Matrix Award for exceptional women in all arts and media.
Recently moving from her homes in New York City and San Francisco, Langley now lives on Kiawah Island. Langley is a director of the Charleston Literary Festival. Her favorite lifetime role is mom to her daughter who's a medical student at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.