Cisco Partner Leader Alexandra Zagury Jumps To Microsoft

Alexandra Zagury left Cisco with the title of vice president of global partner operations and platform experience.

Partner experience and sales leader Alexandra Zagury has left Cisco Systems after close to 11 years of working side-by-side with its channel partners and has joined Microsoft as corporate vice president of global channel sales.

Zagury updated her LinkedIn account to show that she joined Redmond, Wash.-based artificial intelligence and cloud tools vendor Microsoft in October.

Leaving Cisco “wasn’t an easy decision,” Zagury said in a post earlier in the week that announced her departure from the San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant. “Cisco has been more than a company for me, it’s been a life-changing journey. Over the years I’ve had the privilege to move countries, take on very different roles, learn from incredible leaders and colleagues, and chase bold, transformative ideas, thank you to those who stood by me through it all.”

Tim Coogan, senior vice president of global partner sales at Cisco, responded to CRN in a statement on Zagury’s departure.

“Alexandra brought energy and commitment to our partner organization during her tenure at Cisco. As we identify a successor, our managed services strategy and deep partner commitment remain unchanged—we’re investing more than ever in enabling partners to capture this market opportunity. Our partners will see this strong commitment in action at Partner Summit in November and with the launch of Cisco 360 Partner Program in February 2026,” he said.

CRN has reached out to Zagury for comment. Microsoft declined to comment when reached by CRN.

Zagury’s hiring comes as Microsoft elevates Judson Althoff to a new commercial CEO role from his previous position of executive vice president and chief commercial officer, which gave him oversight of Microsoft’s partner organization.

Microsoft not only elevated Althoff but said he will lead a new Microsoft commercial leadership team with leaders from engineering, sales, marketing, operations and finance.

Zagury left Cisco with the title of vice president of global partner operations and platform experience, according to her LinkedIn account. Her accomplishments around integrating Splunk’s channel sales and ecosystem into Cisco helped her be honored as a Power 100 executive on CRN’s 2025 Women of the Channel list and named to CRN’s 2025 Channel Chief list.

A leader that has spent about 20 years involved with indirect channels and solution providers, Zagury earlier this year in CRN’s Channel Chiefs described her personal channel philosophy to CRN: “A company’s channel strategy, architecture and execution shape profitability and competitiveness. Yet with the rise of cloud-based outcomes and AI-accelerated experiences, traditional partner models are fading, making way for flexible, symbiotic partnerships that support the entire customer life cycle. As stewards of the channel and our partner ecosystem, we are dutybound to adapt and evolve to these new models,” she said.

Zagury joined Cisco in 2015 as channel sales managing director for the Europe, the Middle East and Africa region. Her resume includes about six years with BlackBerry, leaving with the title of vice president and managing director for the U.K.

Zagury’s departure isn’t the only executive move that has made news in the last couple of months at Cisco. The tech giant in August revealed that effective immediately, Coogan, former senior vice president of Cisco’s U.S. commercial business, would assume the global channel chief role held by Rodney Clark, a longtime Microsoft leader who was named Cisco channel chief in 2023.