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Karen Walker

Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

Karen Walker is the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Cisco, overseeing Global Marketing. Walker and her team are responsible for building and strengthening Cisco's brand, supporting growth strategies, cultivating opportunities in new and existing markets, and increasing demand for Cisco's solutions globally.

Since joining Cisco, Walker has championed marketing's role as an accountable business function, aligning closely with sales teams, engineering teams, and Cisco partners. Karen has made strategic investments to further Marketing's vision to become the leader in real-time, personalized marketing. Most notably, she has invested in the newest marketing technologies to build a multi-award-winning techstack (Markie 2017 and 2018, Stackie 2017, and more), creating a world-class digital marketing infrastructure optimizing for the best experience for our customers, sellers, and partners. Walker has also led as Cisco's brand value increased 16% to $34.6B dollars, ranking #15 on Interbrand's Best Global Brands list.

Leading up to her promotion to CMO, Walker excelled in her various roles at Cisco, starting as the Global VP of Services Marketing, growing to take on Segments and Partners, and then finally becoming SVP of Go-to-market.

Walker's 20-plus years in the IT industry have included senior field and marketing leadership roles in Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific region. She joined Cisco from Hewlett-Packard, where she held business and consumer leadership positions including VP Marketing for HP Services, Executive Director of Consumer Digital Entertainment and VP Personal Systems groups.

Walker is a recognized industry authority on both technology and marketing topics, frequently participating on panels and giving keynotes around the world. For three years in a row she has been recognized by Forbes as one of the world's Most Influential CMOs, currently ranked in the Top 10 globally. She is a member of the Board of the Association of National Advertisers and is a strong supporter of the #SeeHer movement – an effort led by the ANA to accurately portray women and girls in the media by 2020. Walker also sponsors multiple initiatives to accelerate female leadership within Cisco and has lectured on business thought leadership at multiple universities.

Walker holds a Bachelor of Science degree with joint Honors in Chemistry and Business Studies from Loughborough University in England and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Business Administration from the University of Sunderland in 2018.

Articles

August 25, 2017

13

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

The Network. Intuitive. The Next Chapter with Peter Dinklage

It’s been just over two months since Cisco unveiled our vision for the new era of networking, The Network. Intuitive. The response has been amazing. Employees, partners, customers, and influencers are all excited about what happens when a network constantly, learns, adapts and protects. And the more…

June 26, 2017

3

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

Introducing The Network. Intuitive.

Last week, Cisco ushered in a new era of networking with the announcement of intent-based technologies that constantly learn, adapt, and protect. Built around the Cisco DNA architecture, it’s a network designed to be intuitive. The new network from Cisco is a game-changer for businesses, so we neede…

December 12, 2016

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

There’s Never Been a Better Time…to Tell Cisco’s Story

Technology is changing everything. It’s solving some of the world’s greatest challenges and transforming our customers’ businesses in new and unprecedented ways. Our job is to help our customers navigate this complexity—so there’s never been a better time to tell the Cisco story clearly and concisel…

September 6, 2016

12

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

Cisco’s Digital Network Shines at Rio 2016

For the athletes competing at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the global event served as the culmination of years of hard work, dedication and sacrifice. Likewise, for the Cisco Rio 2016 team, the Olympic and Paralympic Games represent more than three years of dedication and 34,000 engineering hours to…

May 3, 2016

56

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

There’s Never Been A Better Time

We are technology optimists. Billions of people and things are being connected globally. Digitization is forcing organizations and even countries to reimagine business models, products and services. Every industry, government, school system, university and hospital is grappling with how to navigate…

October 1, 2015

15

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

How the Internet of Everything is changing lives

The Internet of Everything (IoE) is already helping to unlock new possibilities for health care. What’s coming next is a new kind of connected medicine with the potential to save lives. A networked connection of people, process, data, and things is transforming healthcare through developments like e…

May 12, 2015

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

#DigitalTransformation Fueling the Need for Workforce Transformation

Digital disruption is transforming virtually every role in every industry. Every day I see how the proliferation of online, mobile, and social interactions has created the need for completely new marketing strategies—and completely new skillsets for marketing professionals. We can see this same disr…

July 15, 2014

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

Smart Companies Go Beyond Social Listening

Recently Sprinklr asked me how companies today are in trouble if they’re not keeping up with social disruption. Which led me to consider:  What makes a company smart when it comes to being social? Answer:  Smart companies recognize three things… Customers’ social expectations continue to rise.…

February 17, 2014

PARTNER

Marketing Insights on Revenue Generation, Buying Patterns, and the Role of Social

Revenue-generating marketing, customer buying patterns, and social selling are a few of the topics I talked about recently with Glenn Gow of Crimson Marketing.  I’m pleased to share these excerpts from our conversation and invite you to listen to the podcast. Glenn: Why don’t we start with this conc…