When most people picture volunteering, they imagine planting trees, serving meals at a local shelter, or painting a community center — all meaningful, all valuable. But what if your volunteer time took you 30 feet below the ocean’s surface, surrounded by manta rays gliding silently through crystal-clear water in the remote reaches of Raja Ampat? That’s exactly where you’d find Rainbow Cheung — not on a vacation, but on a mission.
Before the Dive: Meet Rainbow Cheung
Before we take you to the ocean floor, we’ll take you to Salesforce Singapore – where Rainbow Cheung works as an Account Executive. For Rainbow, Salesforce didn’t just offer a career – it offered a community that grew with her through every season of life. And she’ll be the first to tell you that life isn’t something you can optimize all at once. “I look at success in multiple ways: I have my personal success, my family success, and my career success,” she says. “At any given point, I can only be focused on two out of these three.”
This honest take on how to balance life’s many facets has helped shape how Rainbow has experienced her time at Salesforce. Early in her tenure, her focus was career and personal development. Then came a shift toward family and personal growth. Now, she’s channeling her energy into family and career, finding that Salesforce has made space for all of it, at every stage.
“I’m really thankful for the benefits that we have to allow us the ability to enjoy the family time that we need while working and pursuing the career that we wanted,” she reflects.
Singapore: A City as Layered as Rainbow’s career journey
Singapore as a city isn’t all too different from the ocean floor itself as both locations are culturally rich, diverse, and extremely expansive (of course, one is under water). And for Rainbow, the city isn’t just a posting, it’s home.
“Singapore is a garden city that is very good for corporate and family life,” she says. “That’s literally why I’m here.” From its family-friendly neighborhoods to the richness of working across the ASEAN region — navigating different cultures, languages, and ways of doing business — Singapore has offered Rainbow a life that is as layered and expansive as the career she’s built. “Being in ASEAN, we have so many countries and each country is so different… that is something that a lot of places you won’t get.” And she wouldn’t trade it for anything. “I’m really happy that I work at Salesforce Singapore.”
Over the course of eight years, Rainbow has worn many hats. She started in a specialist role looking after the social media software business, then began looking for a change that reflected her growing passion for sustainability. Her passion didn’t stay a side pursuit for long.
When Salesforce began looking for someone to lead sustainability efforts in APAC, Rainbow raised her hand. As the Head of Sustainability for APAC, she worked with leaders across the region, real estate teams, and customers to drive meaningful sustainability initiatives. Most recently, Rainbow took her passion for sustainability to the Public Sector space as an Account Executive, a role that gives her something she’s always been searching for.
“I really wanted a passion-driven job. I want my job to have a purpose. If I were to be able to help governments across the world and across the region be more efficient and better serve citizens, that would give me a purpose in my job.”
Diving In to Giving Back
While the city’s energy and offerings were clearly part of the draw, there was a bigger factor that took her to Salesforce: the chance to give back.
“What drew me into Salesforce was the volunteer model,” she says. “Volunteering has always been a really big part of my life.” At Salesforce, Rainbow’s passion was a perfect fit for our 1-1-1 model, where we give back 1% of our equity, 1% of our technology, and 1% of our employee’s time to giving back. “The moment I joined Salesforce as an Account Executive role, I was on a volunteering time off trip within three months after joining the company. Within the first year, I already organized my first VTO trip.”
Through the company’s Volunteer Time Off (VTO) program, employees are given dedicated time to contribute to causes that matter to them. For Rainbow, that was the ocean. She knew immediately she wanted to help in the form of marine related conservation or research NGO, but at the time, nothing like that existed as a VTO opportunity at Salesforce. So she built it herself.
“There are only two organizations in the world that do manta ray research and I bumped into one of them at a diving expo.” From there, Rainbow asked the company’s representative who to connect with to discuss bringing Salesforce volunteers on board to help them with their research. The rest of the story is… history.
Making Waves with Manta Trust
Fast forward to 2017 where Rainbow co-founded a VTO partnership with Manta Trust, the world’s leading NGO for global manta and devil ray conservation.
“We run three to four trips every year with them across the world, fundraise hundreds of thousands of dollars, and all the money goes into the NGO and also for the marine biologists that work for the project. They track the manta rays movement across the world and then they know how they migrate.”
What started as a personal passion became something oceans bigger: a program that has brought Salesforce employees together from around the world. Traveling to countries like the Maldives, Indonesia, Ecuador, and Mexico, Salesforce employees come together all united by a shared mission to protect one of the ocean’s most magnificent creatures.
And the stakes couldn’t be higher for these creatures. All 10 species of manta and devil rays are currently threatened with extinction, primarily due to fisheries. Manta Trust — whose mission is to drive the research, education, and policy needed to conserve manta rays and their habitats — is the leading authority working to turn the tide. And through Salesforce’s VTO program, Rainbow and her fellow volunteers are part of the cause.
Each expedition takes volunteers to some of the most remote corners of the ocean where funding is scarce and scientific resources are limited. On any given dive, Salesforce volunteers might be exploring uncharted waters to locate new manta ray nurseries and cleaning stations, collecting manta ray identifications in areas rarely visited by tourist boats, or helping marine biologists by matching manta IDs. Beyond the water, volunteers have even helped build innovative technology like custom “Eyes on the Reef” camera rigs to capture manta sightings between dives — designed and built by a Salesforce volunteer themself.
The Ripple Effect
And the impact doesn’t stop when the expedition ends. Salesforce’s donation matching means that every dollar an employee contributes to Manta Trust is doubled. These matching funds now go directly toward funding Manta Trust’s operations, and a result, multiply the real-world impact every volunteer can make.
Find Your Ocean and Make Your Splash
Rainbow’s story is proof that a career at Salesforce is so much more than a job title. Here, it’s a platform: for your values, your community, and the causes that matter most to you. Whether your ocean is underwater, in a classroom, or halfway across the world, Salesforce gives you the space to dive in.
Ready to make your own splash? Explore open roles at Salesforce and find out where your passion – and your purpose – could take you.
Blaze your trail to Salesforce!
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AI supported the writers and editors who created this article.
