Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins today announced the new executive leadership team to spearhead his growth strategies.
The new team balances continuity in key positions with the elevation of the next generation of Cisco leaders from within the company, and talent from outside of Cisco.
Who are leaving Cisco?
Padmasree Warrior, chief technology and strategy officer, and Edzard Overbeek, senior vice president of Services, will be leaving Cisco.
Wim Elfrink, executive vice president for Industry Solutions and chief globalisation officer, will retire from Cisco.
Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco, said: “This is a remarkable team, with a diverse set of experiences, expertise and backgrounds to accelerate our innovation and execution, simplify how we do business, drive operational rigor in all we do, and inspire our amazing employees to be the best that they can be.”
Cisco has also tried to retain several key people by offering main positions in the enterprise networking company.
Chuck Robbins’ key team
Pankaj Patel, executive vice president, chief development officer
Pankaj will continue to lead Cisco’s 25,000 development engineers and $36 billion technology portfolio. In the past two years, he refocused engineering operations on growth opportunities such as cloud, mobility, data center, security, collaboration, software and the Internet of Everything and transformed engineering to accelerate innovation and drive efficiency into Cisco’s core engineering functions.
Kelly Kramer, executive vice president and chief financial officer
Kelly joined Cisco three years ago after spending 20 years at GE working across numerous divisions and countries. She has driven a disciplined focus on Cisco’s financial model. She has established herself as a business leader capable of partnering across and influencing the entire organization.
Rebecca Jacoby, senior vice president, Operations
Rebecca’s leadership as Cisco’s chief information technology officer and track record of operational excellence, problem solving and talent development have elevated the role of IT at Cisco. In her expanded role, she will oversee the global supply chain, global business services, security and trust, and IT.
Guillermo Diaz, Cisco senior vice president of IT, has been promoted to CIO reporting to Rebecca. He has been accountable for the company’s enterprise IT architecture, technology strategy, and IT services model.
Francine Katsoudas, senior vice president, chief people officer
Francine Katsoudas is the architect of Cisco’s people strategy since 2014. Fran has brought energy and innovation to revitalizing Cisco’sapproach to strategic workforce planning, emphasizing the skills and capabilities that employees need to be innovative in today’s technology-driven environment.
Hilton Romanski, senior vice president, chief technology and strategy officer
Hilton joins the Cisco executive leadership team from his previous role as head of Cisco’s mergers and acquisitions strategy and Cisco’s $2 billion private investment portfolio. He has has been responsible for over $20 billion in acquisitions in 40 deals, including Meraki, Sourcefire and Airespace.
Karen Walker, senior vice president, chief marketing officer
Karen steps into the role of chief marketing officer from her position overseeing Cisco’s go-to-market organization. In this capacity she led integrated global marketing strategy and the integration of in-country execution of brand campaigns. She joined Cisco from Hewlett-Packard in 2009.
Chris Dedicoat, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales
Chris joined Cisco in 1995 and has served as senior vice president of EMEAR for the past four years where he has led the region to growth. Chris has demonstrated a keen understanding of technology and market opportunities, an ability to drive transformation, execution and an unparalleled ability to lead and motivate teams.
Joe Cozzolino, senior vice president, Services
Joe is stepping in to lead Cisco’s services organization after spending the past two years leading Cisco’s service provider mobility and video infrastructure businesses. He joined Cisco from Motorola in 2013.
Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel
Mark brings 19 years of experience leading Cisco’s legal, employee relations, ethics, investigations and brand protection experts to his new role as a member of the Cisco executive leadership team.
Ruba Borno, vice president, Growth Initiatives and chief of staff
Ruba joins Cisco from her role as principal and leader in the Technology, Media & Telecommunications, and People & Organization practice groups at Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
In addition to these appointments, Cisco plans to conduct external search to fill a number of leadership roles for key strategic growth areas for the company.
