Some of my recent work at Cisco
For the first six years at Cisco I had been focused on building and delivering technical enablement programs for Cisco Systems. My primary solutions area is in the Collaboration technology market which is unique in the way that it effects business processes and outcomes. It takes an village of specialists to pull these events off and I really enjoyed building, inspiring and managing these teams to drive a common goal.
Although I am an engineer at heart, my responsibilities around these programs are cradle to grave. This begins with setting a vision for the program, selling it to leadership, building virtual teams, fundraising, managing finance, reviewing content, all the way through to final delivery and execution. Literally running a business within a business.
After participating in the STLDP program in 2016/2017 I discovered my true calling as a coach. Although it surprised me
Global Solution Architect Manager
After participating in the STLDP program in 2016/2017 I discovered my true calling as a coach. Although it surprised me, this lead me to a leadership position at Cisco. I have been leading a team of solution architects aligned to technology and industry partners for the past three years. It not only gave me the opportunity to expand my knowledge of the Cisco portfolio and partnerships but fulfilled my passion of helping grow engineers on my team.
My crew at Impact in 2019
STLDP Class of 2017 at Cisco San Jose campus
SE Transitions and leadership development Program (STldp)
In 2016 I was selected to participate in a program that represents the top 1% of the engineering ranks within Cisco. In this six month long program there are basically two focus areas. First and foremost is the case study team. We are assigned to a team to develop a solution for a big problem that Cisco is facing. The team I lead was given the task to make recommendations on how the SE organization needs to evolve to maximize our potential to drive recurring revenue. Some might think that this is a sales driven function but we believe that our engineering organization is best positioned to solve this problem. The second area that we work on in STLDP is around soft skills. We were instructed in topics ranging from executive presence to leading virtual teams. Full batteries of personality surveys and 360 style feedback tools were used to give us a good view of our strengths and blindspots. This program has helped me immensely to understand my values and desires in both career and life. Coincidentally, it is what inspired me to build this website.
Collaboration Specialist Training
CST was evolved from a couple of other programs like Jabber Specialist Training and Video Preferred Architecture delivered in roadshow format designed to take hands-on Collaboration technical enablement the masses. In our 2017 fiscal year we hit over 60 cities worldwide enabling 2500 partner and internal engineers. Topics ranged from video endpoint deployment best practices all the way to developing applications against our robust cloud API platform. What I really enjoy about running this program is how willing field engineers at Cisco are to learn the content in order to redeliver it in their local offices around the globe.
First day of CST2 in Lisbon, Portugal
Kicking off the 2016 Collaboration VT
Collaboration Technical VT
Over the past three years I have worked to drive integration between our internal technical enablement event and our external partner community. This annual event now boasts attendance of over 1000 Cisco and partner engineers and sellers arming them with the knowledge and confidence needed to drive our solutions into the market. With over 100 main tent, breakout, and lab sessions spanning four facilities on the Cisco campus in San Jose, CA it is a truly a massive undertaking.