New Cisco Americas Channel Chief: ‘This Is Not Your Mother’s Go-To-Market Partnership’

Tell us about your role and what’s your strategy for tackling the Americas market?

It’s funny, having joined Cisco — May will be 23 years ago — it still feels so new because there’s always so much going on. It’s so exciting. In my new role, I feel like it’s sort of back to the future because I’m leaving our Global Partner Organization and I’m rejoining APO. In the new role, I’m leading a team of fantastic leaders across the Americas responsible for driving our go to market with our partners, be they public sector, commercial, enterprise, service provider, and most importantly, these partners are focused on driving the innovation, driving aligning to Cisco strategy, and really focused on that next generation [technology], whether it’s software as a service, managed services, and security. So, I’m really excited to one, get back into the Americans partner organization. But two, to me, it feels new again with all the exciting things that are going on with Cisco.

The [current] strategy is working. However, we are evolving. And when I say evolving, we are not only aligning with our partners today to help them understand that next generation in innovation, we’re also investing in and cultivating relationships with partners that are not necessarily traditional to Cisco, whether it’s the ecosystem partners [or] the cloud service providers, so whether it is really driving as a service [or] the acceleration and application development in the cloud, as well as what we historically think about when we think about the Cisco partner ecosystem, it’s always an evolving strategy, but [it’s really about] really pulling more of an expanded partner base into that core piece of our business and accelerating that.

How will you bring your two decades-plus experience in the channel into this new role?

It’s a combination of leveraging that experience, but not really resting on my laurels or saying: “I’ve been here for 20 plus years, so trust me, I know.” It’s really understanding the value and the importance of expanding our reach. And because of the experience I have, I like to think I can quickly assess within Cisco, as well as the external partner community, where we have gaps [and] where we need coverage. I think my experience will allow me to quickly identify areas of growth and some pivot points in areas of transition.