Life At Cisco

When I started at Cisco over three years ago with the Security & Trust Org’s (STO) Global Certification Team (GCT), I made the decision to be open about the fact that I’m gay. Not in an in-your-face, wear-it-on-your-sleeve kind of way, but rather in an authentic about who I am as a person kind o…

Sometimes you don’t need big data to tell you that getting from point A to point B will be faster by way of bicycle than by way of car. Living in Denmark (and especially in Copenhagen) the bike is often the chosen mode of transportation due to traffic within the city. And, I’ve found that there is s…

You may think that remembering someone’s name is a small feat. But when you are an executive at a very large company like Cisco – that can be rather difficult. Irving Tan, however, mastered this skill. He never forgot my name, even as infrequent as I saw him, which just goes to prove what kind of le…

Recently I attended a training for my career development. I’m a VCSE specialist in MANO for Service Provider at Cisco, and this was an opportunity to get some pre-sales training with a Service Provider focus. I got there early, and had a few moments to get settled and look around. 90% of my fellow t…

Honestly, I was a little nervous to work at Cisco. After spending a career in outside sales where I was always on the move, I worried what coming back into an office environment might mean for me. Would it mean being more sedentary? Would my teammates be “fine” with being chained to a desk all day?…

I’ve been here for 18 years. On purpose. People ask me why. Recruiters speculate that I’m lazy (pfff) while coworkers call me crazy (not really, or at least not often, but it rhymed so nicely). 😉 The most important person who asks me this question is me. Many of us find ourselves asking, “Wh…

Two year olds operate with a rather unique set of algorithms. Which is to say that they don’t follow the rules we adults have calculated for safety. One Friday morning, my tiny human leapt off of the couch and for a brief millisecond, all systems stopped; heartbeat, breathing, digestion. My panicked…

Did you know that dressing and acting like a fictional television icon can actually make children more likely to finish a boring, repetitive task? It’s true, according to a recent study published in the journal ‘Child Development.’ Since I am a child at heart, there was only one conclusion for me: I…

There are so many “wow” moments at Cisco, that we almost get too used to it. So you’ll know when I tell you about my “wow” moment recently, you’ll know it was capital WOW. Cisco has a long-standing partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA), which was recently showcased in Central Lo…