This post originally appeared on Forbes on October 15, 2024.
When Brooke Eby was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, she knew the time would come when she would need to disclose her diagnosis to her employer, Salesforce. "I had no idea what to expect," says Eby. "On a Zoom screen, you can't really tell that anything's going on. I just didn't know how to approach it." Eby landed on a LinkedIn post to break the news. "I didn't know what my future would be with working; I didn't know if they would want me to plan my transition out."
Quite the opposite happened. The outpouring of support on the LinkedIn post was overwhelmingly positive. It caught the eye of Salesforce executives, and "it started making its way up the chain, and the C-suite started commenting, which was so intimidating," says Eby. From there, the support caught fire. Her Salesforce colleagues decided to start The Levity Project, which had goals around donation and a company-wide movement challenge, as Eby was losing her mobility. "Before I knew it, people across the company were sending photos of them doing a workout with a banner with my name on it!"
Eby has since amassed almost 200,000 TikTok followers — her handle is limpbroozkit — where she advocates for ALS. She's also building out resources for the ALS community. And she does this all with the support and financial backing of Salesforce, where she remains employed full-time. In fact, Salesforce executives invited Eby to speak at the quarterly company meeting and share her story. "That was the point that I knew Salesforce was in it now."
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