Cisco promotes industry veteran to new position of SVP of Growth Marketing

By further aligning Sales and Marketing, Cisco can drive growth and better serve customers.

When our Chief Marketing Officer Karen Walker announced she would be moving on several months ago, we set out on a global search for her replacement. We knew we needed a world-class leader to tell our story and keep our momentum moving forward. At the same time, we needed someone who was intimately familiar with our business, passionate about our products, and who deeply understands our industry, our customers, and the power of our brand.

At Cisco, we are never shy about challenging legacy processes and traditional thinking if we believe that we can better serve our customers with a new model. With that ethos in mind, and after dozens of conversations with some amazing talent, it became clear that we had the right person, and the right approach, right under our noses.

Jim Walsh, who has been leading Cisco’s Global Sales Segments and Industries (GSSI) team and initiatives, will take the newly formed position of SVP, Growth Marketing.

The last several months we have talked a lot about the evolution of marketing and the importance of teams working closely together headed towards one goal, and that’s growth. This transformation allows us to marry our customer segmentation strategy with our core marketing team.

This move will drive our top line growth by accelerating our lead generation, and it will aid our go-to-market strategy with customer insights and feedback. I believe this step in our evolution will help us in our present realities and prepare us for the future needs of the business. I look forward to seeing how Cisco Marketing will continue to break new ground under Jim’s leadership.

At the same time, we are also rethinking the structure of our product marketing organization and aligning those teams directly with the business units they support. Collaboration Marketing will be moving to Amy Chang’s organization; CX Marketing will be moving to Maria Martinez’s organization; and Data Center, Cloud, Security, SP, and EN Marketing will move under the leadership of David Goeckeler.

I am extremely excited to see where this evolution in marketing takes us, and I am confident that these moves set us up for a great FY20 and beyond. Sales and Marketing will accomplish more than ever before.