Incoming Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins has unveiled his new executive leadership team. Pankaj Patel will as chief development officer continue to lead Cisco’s 25,000 development engineers and the company’s USD 36 billion technology portfolio. Kelly Kramer, promoted to CFO at Cisco early this year, will stay in the position.
CIO Rebecca Jacoby will lead operations, overseeing the global supply chain, global business services, security and trust, and IT. Guillermo Diaz, in charge of IT, has been promoted to CIO, reporting directly to Jacoby.
Francine Katsoudas will continue as chief people officer. Hilton Romanski will join the executive leadership team as chief technology and strategy officer. He was previously head of Cisco's mergers and acquisitions strategy and of the company’s USD 2 billion private investment portfolio. Karen Walker will become chief marketing officer after overseeing Cisco’s go-to-market organisation.
Chris Dedicoat will head worldwide sales after serving as senior VP of EMEAR for the past four years. Joe Cozzolino will head the company’s services organisation 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 will be general counsel and Ruba Borno chief of staff and head of growth initiatives. Borno joins Cisco from the Boston Consulting Group where she was principal and leader in the Technology, Media & Telecommunications, and People & Organization practice groups.
In addition to these appointments, Cisco also plans to conduct a comprehensive external search to fill some other leadership roles.
With the changes, Padmasree Warrior, Cisco chief technology and strategy officer, and Edzard Overbeek, senior VP of Services, will move into strategic advisor roles, effective immediately and stay through the transition. Wim Elfrink, Cisco executive VP for industry solutions and chief globalisation officer, opened Cisco’s second global headquarters in Bangalore, India, and will retire from Cisco effective 25 July.
