Avatar

Wendy Bahr

Senior Vice President

Global Partner Organization

Wendy Bahr is the Senior Vice President of Cisco’s Global Partner Organization. She has responsibility for managing and supporting 60,000+ global partners who represent the company’s primary route to market. Encompassing system integrators, value-added resellers, distributors, services partners, independent software vendors, and technology partners, this global connected partner ecosystem accounts for more than 80 percent of Cisco’s revenue and is a unique differentiator in helping deliver business outcomes for customers and promoting growth for Cisco.

Bahr and her team are responsible for developing strategic initiatives and program innovations that create profitable growth and capacity for Cisco and its partners. With innovative solutions and services based on complementary technologies from Cisco and its partners, Bahr and her team make sure that partners have the right capabilities and skills to serve existing and new market opportunities.

Bahr previously led the Americas Partner Organization for Cisco, which encompassed a team of nearly 600 employees and more than 23,000 partners. In this role, she was responsible for partner enablement, partner profitability, and product and service sales growth with partners in Cisco's largest geographical region (United States, Canada, and Latin America), with annual revenues over $18 billion.

Prior, Bahr led Cisco’s Global and Strategic Partner Organization, where she was responsible for more than $9.5 billion in revenue through the company's largest and most strategic systems integrators, service providers, and ecosystem partners. She was also responsible for Cisco's Global Executive Briefing Centers and Proposals Team, supervising more than 30 executive and customer briefing locations around the world. Bahr also oversaw Cisco's Global Sales Associates Program, which trains new college hires as sales and engineering professionals. Bahr has also been the Senior Vice President of U.S. and Canada Channels, Vice President of U.S. Commercial and Field Channels, Operations Director of Federal Civilian Agencies, and Operations Director of Network Service Providers.

Bahr has spent more than 20 years in sales and technology. Prior to joining Cisco, she was with Verizon for more than 10 years. In her latest role there she was the Director of Enterprise Sales, leading a sales and engineering team focused on Fortune 500 companies and the public sector.

Bahr has received numerous industry accolades and was most recently recognized in the Top Women of the Channel by CRN for 2007–2015, as a 2015 CRN Channel Chief, and as YWCA TWIN Honoree in 2012.

Bahr is a member of Cisco Empowered Women’s Network and a former member of the Gender Diversity Operations Committee. She is a coach and mentor for Cisco's Women Unlimited program, while also personally mentoring dozens of Cisco employees. Her passion for diversity underlies her participation in Cisco's Women's Perspective Sessions, Senior Leadership Diversity Panels, and the Women's Channel Leadership Forum.

Bahr holds a bachelor of business arts degree in communications from Old Dominion University. She has been married to her husband, Eric, for more than 33 years. They reside in Los Gatos, CA.

Articles

June 27, 2018

PARTNER

Fueling Our Partners’ Opportunity

My passport has seen better days. Dog-eared, creased, and scuffed, it’s been my steady companion whose pages chronicle my travel over the last few months. Moscow, London, Melbourne, Singapore, Florida, Chicago, Barcelona, Rome, Nassau, Glasgow – these are just a few of the places I’ve been. Why all…

December 11, 2017

PARTNER

Celebrating Our Most Impactful Assets

Celebrating a major victory is a ritual that organizations do all over the world. Whether it’s an innovation breakthrough, a landmark customer win or reaching a significant milestone on a critical project, the opportunity to pause and savor the accomplishment underscores its importance and reinforce…

December 7, 2017

PARTNER

Simplifying your Organization’s Digital Transformation with Easy Pay

Get access to the latest Cisco innovations through an easy-to-use subscription bundle Explaining the complexity of digital transformation is actually pretty simple: organizations need the latest technology to function at the highest possible level and stay competitive. Sounds easy enough, right? How…

November 1, 2017

PARTNER

Let’s OWN the Opportunity Together

Now’s the time to write the next chapter If you’ve been working in tech for as long as I have, you know that nothing stays the same for long. Cisco has always been a part of that change.  We have now entered the new era of digital business and Cisco wants to help partners navigate the changing custo…

October 31, 2017

PARTNER

And the winners are…

Each year I look forward to Partner Summit and seeing many of our partners.  The event also gives me the opportunity to recognize the performance of our top partners by presenting the Cisco Partner Summit Global Awards.  Please join me in congratulating this year’s winners: Bynet Data Communication…

June 7, 2017

PARTNER

Relying on Constants to Succeed in a Changing World

You know the familiar adage about looking at the past to predict the future, right? That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t always work when you’re dealing with something that’s unchartered, unproven, and not to mention disruptive. Yet as businesses running technology companies in today’s hyper-cha…

February 23, 2017

PARTNER

Cisco Capital Partners: Keeping Up with the Changing Pace of Business

Co-authors:  Wendy Bahr, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Partner Organization and Steve Taylor, Senior Director, Cisco Capital Global Partner Organization At the last Cisco Partner Summit, our CEO Chuck Robbins said that business has “never been moving faster than it is now.” We think this statemen…

December 12, 2016

PARTNER

How You Can Drive More Repeatable and Predictable Revenue in 2017

I’ve been putting my Amazon Echo through its paces lately. Its voice recognition service, Alexa, and I have established a pretty close relationship: “Alexa, call Uber”, “Alexa, buy How Far Can You Go? by John Maclean”, “Alexa, it’s a little chilly, raise the temperature to 70 degrees.” You get the i…

November 2, 2016

PARTNER

And the Award Goes to…

One of the most anticipated events at Partner Summit is the annual Global Awards reception. As we come together to recognize our partners for achieving outstanding leadership and innovation, we also celebrate the success of our entire community. Last night, I had the privilege of presenting these 20…