Juan Perez is Ready for Board Service and Teaching the Next Generation of Leaders

Juan Perez reflects on 32 years at UPS, a bonus CIO assignment at Salesforce, and his very busy board of directors’ schedule

Juan Perez, Former CIO, UPS and Salesforce (Photo by Audra Mellon)

BY BILLY YOST, HISPANIC EXECUTIVE

In 2021, Hispanic Executive celebrated Juan Perez for his more than three decades at UPS, where he retired a year later as chief information and engineering officer. It was not a bad exit for a guy who started loading packages at UPS before working his way up the corporate ladder.

Perez’s retirement was short-lived. The CIO was called back into service at Salesforce, where he would spend three successful years working through a mandate, preparing leaders for his eventual departure, and devoting his full-time attention to board service.

“When I was invited to join Salesforce, there was a very clear mission as to what we wanted to accomplish,” Perez explains. “The first was to transform the IT organization to support scalability and growth. The organization has been so incredibly successful, but now it’s in a place where it wants to grow beyond its $40 billion in revenues. The question was, did we have an IT organization that was equipped and prepared to go on that journey?”

Secondly, Perez says that even a company like Salesforce, a stalwart for driving innovation for its partners, still needs to examine its own IT organization and look for ways to modernize. The CIO saw opportunities, from data systems to HR to financial systems that could be advanced.

Juan Perez’s Leadership Principles

Perez has learned quite a bit about how to lead over the span of his career at UPS and Salesforce. The following principles guide his leadership.

• Teamwork-Committed
• Productivity-Minded
• Technology-Oriented
• Respectful
• Driven to Action

Finally, Perez would implement a new operating model that would support the organization in managing its intention to always be customer zero, the first customer of any new technology it was developing.

More personally, Perez also had his charge. The CIO wanted to make sure to bring in new talent that could help mature the next generation of tech professionals, even after his own departure.

It’s three years later, and as Perez steps down from his role, there is a lot to celebrate.

“I think the mandate for the next CIO here is very different from the one I took on, and in that way I think we were successful here,” Perez explains. “I believe I’ve left a team that is going to be able to adjust to whatever the next vision and journey is. I’d like to pass that on to other leaders out there. You take on different roles and responsibilities. It’s always important to leave a team that’s in a good position to take on whatever comes next, because change is inevitable.”

Continuing to Serve

Now upon his second retirement, Perez isn’t quite ready for drinks on the beach. In fact, his board service schedule seems like it has the potential to run him a bit ragged. Perez has served on the board of directors for the Hershey Company since 2019.

“I love companies that have incredible missions, and Hershey’s is to support the Hershey School,” Perez explains. Initially conceived as a home and school for orphaned boys, the school has transformed into a pre-k to 12th-grade, cost-free, private, coeducational school available for students from low-income households.

Juan Perez (Photo by Audra Melton/Courtesy of Juan Perez)

More recently, Perez’s board work has expanded into multiple directions. He now serves on the board of directors at Wabtec and AIG. And if those roles aren’t enough, the CIO is set to join the faculty at Georgia Tech, teaching project management and sharing his wealth of experience with students.

Part of the reason Perez is so willing to take on multiple board assignments is that it’s so rare to see Latinos there at all. Perez says there are so many great Hispanic professionals suited for board service, and if getting more of them on boards is supported by him helping to bridge the gap, he’s willing to serve.

“I want to stay engaged, but mostly I just want to find a way to help others, using my experiences, successes, and failures in IT, operations, and engineering,” Perez explains.

In 2025, Perez was awarded the Alumni Visionary Award from the USC Latino Alumni Association. The CIO says the award gave him a forum to recognize those who opened opportunities for him, like his predecessor at UPS, Dave Barnes, who retired from the company in 2016. And it also gave young Latino professionals an opportunity to see that they too can advance their careers in large and complex organizations.

“Dave opened an incredible door for me,” the CIO says. “I wouldn’t be speaking with you today if it weren’t for leaders like him, who saw something special in me and who challenged me, coached me, and mentored me. Those of us in positions of responsibility today have an obligation to help others grow in their professional careers.” Perez continues, saying that whenever he thinks about his own leadership, he thinks about the great team members he worked with over the years who, through their commitment, expertise, and dedication, helped achieve great things.

Though Michael Jordan may have spent some time with the Washington Wizards, everyone remembers him in the red and black. Perez probably sees more in brown. He accomplished great things at Salesforce, but he grew up, evolved, and became a true leader at UPS. Everything he learned about good leadership, he learned at the parcel service company.

“It’s been three years since I retired from UPS, and I found I’m starting to forget details about projects and the work we did,” Perez says. “But you know what you don’t forget? The great partners that you had. Projects and initiatives, of course they had meaning. But what you really remember is that you had an impact on people.”

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