Alistair Antoine
Alistair Antoine is an accomplished technology leader with 20+ years of diverse industry experience, including HR Talent Management, Talent Acquisition, Information Technology, Retail, and Healthcare. Known for his transformative approach, he drives impactful change by prioritizing talent, skills, and learning innovation. Alistair excels in shaping strategy and architecture roadmaps, particularly in Talent Management, and is adept at implementing empowering enterprise-wide ecosystems for employees' career development.
A visionary thought leader, Alistair leverages a strategic mindset to define and communicate shared technical and architectural visions. He is passionate about driving innovation and future growth through an architecture-led approach that prioritizes user experience. At the core of his leadership is a deep commitment to fostering an inclusive and equitable workplace, amplifying the voices of underrepresented individuals. Alistair firmly believes in the power of diversity and inclusion as catalysts for organizational success and innovation.
Born and raised in Blantyre, Malawi, Alistair now lives in Buckinghamshire, UK with his wife and three sons. Alistair holds a Bachelor of Commerce Degree in Information Systems from the esteemed University of Cape Town, exemplifying a strong academic foundation and an unwavering commitment to continuous learning. With boundless passion for leveraging technology to create opportunities for growth and transformation, he actively breaks down barriers, challenges biases, and advocates for a more inclusive future for all.
Alistair Antoine stands as a paragon of leadership, leaving an indelible mark on the organizations he serves. His vision for a more inclusive and innovative future continues to inspire those around him, making him a driving force in the pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Bee Kheng Tay
Bee Kheng is the President for Cisco Systems in Southeast Asia and is responsible for driving Cisco’s profitable growth and leading its go-to-market operations across 10 countries in the region.
Since joining Cisco in 2016, Bee Kheng has held a number of leadership roles. Most recently, she was the Managing Director, Renewals, Asia-Pacific Japan and China, at Cisco, where she drove Cisco’s customer experience strategy and played an instrumental role in Cisco’s transition towards a software-based and recurring revenue-based model, leading her team to achieve impressive consecutive double-digit growth over the years.
Prior to this, Bee Kheng led Cisco’s Singapore and Brunei business, during which she elevated Cisco’s engagement with the Singapore government and broader Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry. This was made possible by her leadership in galvanizing the team and driving strategic programs to realize the collective goal.
Testament to her commitment to excellence, innovation, and collaboration, Bee Kheng was the chief architect for the establishment of the Cisco Singapore Co-Innovation Center and the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, supported by successful partnerships with Singapore’s Economic Development Board.
Bee Kheng brings with her more than two decades of experience in the enterprise technology industry across Asia-Pacific and Japan. She is a seasoned leader with a proven track record in building innovative sales organizations that are characterized by their focus on customers and partners, operational excellence and winning culture.
She is passionate about encouraging women to pursue a career in STEM. Outside the world of IT, she has a keen interest in history, psychology, philosophy, and science. .
Brian Tippens
Brian Tippens is Senior Vice President and Chief Social Impact Officer at Cisco. In this role, Brian oversees leadership of the company’s inclusive future work including social justice, advocacy, accessibility, and community impact to advance Cisco’s purpose to Power an Inclusive Future for All.
Brian is a sought-after speaker and thought leader in the fields of social justice, diversity and sustainability. He is a World Economic Forum (WEF) Contributor, a proud member of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC), and he has served as a director or advisor to several organizations including Operation HOPE, the Hispanic IT Executive Council (HITEC), Corporate Eco Forum (CEF), the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME), Cisco Foundation Board of Trustees, and the UN Global Compact Network USA, the American chapter of the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative.
Brian’s career spans over 25 years of leadership in the IT industry. Brian served as Chief Sustainability Officer at HPE and President of the HPE Foundation. He previously spent five years as HP/HPE’s Chief Diversity Officer, reporting to the Chief People Officer. He was a member of HPE’s Political Action Committee (PAC) and AI Ethics boards, and a member of HPE’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Executive Council. Prior to joining HP in 2000 he spent three years at Intel Corporation providing legal support for the manufacturing and IT organizations.
Brian is a purpose-driven leader who is committed to social justice and broad advocacy on the most pressing issues facing our communities. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems Management from the University of San Francisco, and a Juris Doctor from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California. Brian and his wife live in Houston, Texas and are parents of three adult children.
Corien Vermaak
Corien Vermaak started her career as a technology law specialist within the telecommunication space and soon fell in love with data privacy and the legal structures governing cybercrime. In her career, Corien specialised in Cybercrime legislation and Data privacy while representing large multinational on these matters.
She holds a master’s degree in law specialising in cybercrime and data privacy. She has been involved in the writing of legislation in this regard as well as consulting to Africa Union and Interpol on issues relating to cybercrimes and privacy.
Corien is a Qualified Digital Forensic Auditor, Lead ISO 27001 auditor and C|CISO. Corien has been a CISO Advisor for the Cisco Security center of excellence in the Asia Pacific, Japan and China region where she has led market leadership projects.
She has used her lab and investigative experience to instruct and develop training focused on educating children on the dangers in the digital world. She has been running a pro-bono campaign educating over 52,000 children on cyberbullying and digital privacy. In 2022, Corien released her book Hacker Mom – the practical guide to keeping your kids safe online.
Corien is one of the global heads of Cisco Woman in Cyber Security and has been both an executive and non-executive board member for Woman in ICT.
She is currently Cisco’s director of cybersecurity for Australia & New Zealand.
Denise Lee
Denise Lee is Vice President for Cisco’s Engineering Sustainability Office where she leads a team that is defining Cisco’s long-term sustainability vision and roadmap, building new business blueprints and embedding prototype offers across multiple portfolios. She and her team collaborate across every function of the business to develop and create integrated capabilities that serve as the foundation to incubate and scale sustainable products that accelerate the journey to net zero for Cisco, its customers and partners.
In her prior role as VP, Customer Solutions Marketing, Denise was responsible for product marketing, unifying the voices of engineering, sales, and marketing into a singular story to position Cisco’s portfolio roadmap and market development through thought leadership. She set strategy and led a cross-functional ecosystem chartered with breathing life into the benefits customers can expect from their Cisco investments and solutions adoption.
As a Silicon Valley native steeped in the start-up culture and enterprise mind-set, Denise is an accomplished leader, with experience spanning business strategy and operations, product marketing, global sales strategy and planning, global operations and customer support. Skilled at interconnecting diverse points of view in a highly matrixed environment, Denise builds and transforms organizations to accelerate growth.
Denise is a transformational leader inspired by purpose, driven by large scale impact, and dedicated to building world-class teams. Her interests in sustainability and renewable energy, global health, and aiding those in our local communities sustain her mission to complement corporate growth with social giving.
Denise holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.
Gloria Goins
As Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer, Gloria Goins is responsible for Cisco’s DEI strategy, Inclusive Communities, and fairness work. Her team is focused on removing barriers to inclusion and belonging and making sure that Cisco’s internal culture reflects its values. For over 22 years, Gloria has been launching new employee and business strategies to reach and acquire underserved customers at Fortune 50 companies. A highly sought-after public speaker and multicultural thought leader, she frequently consults with senior executives and Boards of Directors on how to build an inclusive culture that attracts, engages and leverages a diverse workforce to drive growth, sales, and operational excellence.
Prior to joining Cisco, Gloria was the Head of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity for Sales, Marketing and Global Services for Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Kurtis Yang
Kurtis Yang is the head of employee engagement for the ONEx organisation at Cisco that includes IT, CX, Operations and Security amongst others. He first joined the company almost 25 years ago as a TAC customer support engineer in Sydney, Australia where he grew up. He went on to hold regional leadership roles in technical support, service logistics and business operations where he led key efforts to improve the experience of Cisco’s customers and partners across Asia-Pacific & Japan.
In 2006, Kurtis and his family relocated to Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose, California where he led global functions in Operations driving major improvements to Cisco’s installed-base data quality, contract management capabilities and operationalising new service offerings. He also drove customer experience practices for Services that resulted in the introduction of the Net Promoter System and a single experience management platform, enabling multiple listening programs to be consolidated to one.
Kurtis has been an active champion of Cisco’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts for over 12 years. He’s the global leader of Cisco’s Connected Asian Affinity Network (CAAN) employee resource organisation. Under his leadership, the community has doubled in size with chapters now in all major regions of the world. He launched CAAN’s Giving Back pillar and has raised over $800,000 and mobilized over 3000 people to volunteer and support underserved communities and non-government organisations globally. Kurtis was the inaugural recipient of the global Leadership Excellence award from the Office of Inclusion and Collaboration and in 2016, the CAAN organisation received an industry award for best Employee Resource Group (ERG) leadership.
Kurtis has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia and is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP). Kurtis enjoys travelling with his family and when at home, mastering the art of barbecue!
Pallavi Arora
Pallavi Arora is the Vice President of Cisco Customer Experience (CX) Centers APJC. Her team of over six thousand employees and partners blend customer insights with technical expertise to deliver globally consistent and compelling experiences. Under Pallavi’s leadership, the team delivers the full portfolio of Cisco support, professional, and managed services.
Pallavi’s 30-plus years of experience in Information Technology, with over 24 years at Cisco, spread across software, product development, and customer experience. Pallavi focuses on strategic transformation for customers through unmatched technical expertise and innovation in cutting-edge technologies.
Pallavi believes in the power of authentic leadership and enjoys solving complex problems. She is an ardent advocate of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity. She sponsors the Cisco Ideathon, an award-winning, inclusive University hiring program that has transformed the hiring strategy of Cisco India. A regular speaker in industry events spanning the topics of business leadership, women in STEM, and nurturing a thriving career, she also serves as a member of the NASSCOM Engineering R&D Council. Pallavi is the Executive Sponsor of APJC Women of Cisco, the Cisco executive sponsor of Singapore Public Healthcare and Singapore Govtech.
Rich Delisser
Richard is an experienced global technology executive who specializes in digital strategy, application engineering, and major program delivery though advanced Agile and DevOps practices. Richard’s focus is to maximize the transformational value of technology by attracting, developing, and retaining great talent.
In his previous role with World Fuel Services, he served as Senior Vice President of Technology from 2018. Richard was responsible for simplifying several logistics platforms into a single digital platform to support future acquisitions as well as leading a complete migration to public cloud, closing 20 global data centers in 3 years.
Prior to joining World Fuel Services, Richard served at Suncorp in Australia as Head of Insurance Technology leading a simplification program that consolidated 13 core insurance platforms to 2, resulting in significant operational efficiencies and improved customer outcomes.
Prior to Suncorp, Richard worked for Disney and Foreign & Colonial in London, leading strategy, transformation, and engineering teams.
Richard holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Queensland University of Technology. During the pandemic, Richard took up flying and is now a licensed private pilot in pursuit of his instrument rating.
Ronak Desai
Ronak Desai Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco AppDynamics and Full-Stack Observability Ronak Desai is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco AppDynamics and Full-Stack Observability. Ronak is responsible for leading the overall AppDynamics business unit, driving strategy, vision, transformation and business growth for AppDynamics and its products – including on-premises, cSaaS, AppDynamics Cloud, and the Full-Stack Observability Platform.
Prior to joining AppDynamics, Ronak was SVP of Cisco’s Cloud Networking Engineering organization, where he spearheaded major strategy and technical shifts across Cisco’s networking portfolio of products and services, including ACI to ACI Anywhere, 400G offerings, Cloud APIC, Nexus Dashboard and more. Ronak has held additional engineering leadership roles at Insieme Networks — which was acquired by Cisco in December of 2013 — where he was responsible for the development and architecture for the ACI controller and Nexus 9000, Hybrid cloud solutions. He helped drive the development of NX-OS, Nexus 7000, MDS9000 and SAN-OS (the pre-cursor to NX-OS). Ronak lives in Oakland, California, and enjoys hiking and mountain biking. He holds 50 patents, many of which are currently embedded in the solutions Cisco provides to address the dynamic needs of worldwide customers and technology partners every day.
Jackie Li
Jackie has worked in IT industry for 18 years. She started as a Cisco TAC engineer supporting Cisco’s Call centre technologies such as IPCCE, UCCX and call manager. She then became an Operations manager where she supported customers across APJC in the service provider, enterprise, education and government sectors. Her next role was her most challenging of all where she managed critical situations such as natural disasters, global process issues, failing multi million dollar deals, cross functional and organisation issues which involved CXO from customers across APJC.
She is now a senior leader of a global team that designs, implements, operations, (DevOps) Cisco's Network Infrastructure using controller based technology (DNAC, Meraki) and frameworks such on ITIL and AGILE. This team helps scales VPN infra to allow over 100k users to work from home and provides wired and wireless networks in over 90 countries across all Cisco offices. The team’s current focus is delivering end to end automation to improve productivity and reduce Network Toil
Jackie was born in Sydney, Australia and studies at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and graduated with a double degree, Bachelor of Computing science (Major in IT strategic management) and Bachelor of Arts in international studies (Japanese Major). Her favourite pastime is finding good food.
Dr Jordan Nguyen
Dr Jordan Nguyen is an internationally-renowned engineer for humanity, who is committed to improving as many lives as possible, and to be a driving force behind both human and positive technological evolution as we move into the future. Jordan has been creating life-changing AI-powered technologies for a few decades, aiming to transform the lives of people with disabilities and the elderly through his role as founder and CEO of Psykinetic, a social business committed to building futuristic, inclusive and empowering technologies to improve independence and quality of life.
With a degree in Electrical Engineering, First-Class Honours, Diploma in Engineering Practice, and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (Chancellor’s List) from the University of Technology Sydney, Jordan is a passionate ambassador for STEAM education, adaptable mindsets and big-picture thinking. He has taught university engineering master’s students in Artificial Intelligence design and Biomedical instrumentation. He believes our young generations are the change-makers of tomorrow and have the potential to create solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.
Jordan shares his adventures through authoring books and creating documentaries across the world. He recently founded his own media company and continues to create world-changing content, particularly exploring our evolving relationship with powerful technologies like Artificial Intelligence, to uncover the hope, the challenges and ethics we need to work through, and the realistic nature of a positive future for humanity.
His latest projects involve companion robots, AI safety systems for care homes, clinical virtual reality experiences, and new computing devices for independence in disability. Inspired by human endeavour, Jordan has big ambitions to see our world step consciously and creatively into a better future.
Rabia Siddique
Rabia is an international humanitarian lawyer, retired British Army senior officer, former war crimes and terrorism prosecutor and hostage survivor.
She has undertaken humanitarian aid work in Asia, South America, Europe and the Middle East, for which she was decorated by Her Majesty the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Rabia’s best selling memoir “Equal Justice: My Journey as a Woman, a Soldier and a Muslim” was published by Pan MacMillan in 2013 and there is interest in adapting this to a movie. She is currently writing her second book “A Beautiful Revolution”, a book about the power we all have to be the change in our lives and in the world around us.
Named as one of Australia’s top 100 women of influence and an Australian of the Year finalist, in addition to her human rights legal practice, Rabia is now a multi award winning storyteller, inspirational speaker, leadership consultant, media commentator and human rights advocate. She is also a board member and ambassador for several not for profit and charity organizations. Peace, equity and the sustainability of our planet is what drives her.
But her biggest challenge and joy is being a single mother to her teenage triplet sons!
Swati Sinha
Swati is an experienced Privacy professional, having worked with several multinational organizations on a variety of matters relating to data protection & privacy compliance and implementation from a practical, operational and legal perspective.
Swati is currently the APJC Privacy Officer at Cisco systems and is responsible for privacy compliance & monitoring activities for Cisco businesses & Offerings across the APAC, Japan and China region. In her role, she also works cohesively with global public policymakers and other multinational corporations as part of several industry associations to aid awareness & influence privacy legislation, standards, and frameworks.
Swati holds a law degree from India and is pursuing a Masters in Information Technology law from the University of Edinburgh. She also holds several IAPP specialised data privacy certifications including Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP), CIPP/US, CIPP/E , CIPP/A and CIPM.
Ileana Rivera
As Vice President of Cisco Collaboration and Corporate Services, Ileana leads innovative hybrid work solutions, internal applications, and collaborative technologies across the enterprise. She is also responsible for overall portfolio management, talent, financials, and metrics for the IT organization. Ileana’s team plays a critical role in ensuring alignment, simplicity, and efficiency for Cisco’s 130,000+ global workforce.
Ileana is a recognized expert within the digital workplace experience with more than 15 years in leadership roles at Cisco. Ileana most recently served as Chief of Staff and Business Operations lead for the Chief Information Officer where she created the strategy and maintained KPIs for talent, portfolio management, finances, agility practices, communications, and stakeholder management.
Prior to her Chief of Staff and Business Operations lead role, Ileana was the Digital Workplace Experience Leader for IT. Ileana was responsible for the vision, strategy and execution of Cisco’s Cloud Office and IT Services Digitization for Cisco’s global workforce. She led strategic IT partnerships with Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Facebook, Lenovo and all end user service provider relationships (ATT, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and others). Ileana led the teams responsible for End User Computing (130K fleet), Mobility (56K users), Mobile Apps Development, Digital Enterprise Marketplace (70K visits/month), Email/Calendaring (38M emails sent/day), Social Platform, and UX/Productivity Services for Cisco’s global workforce and managed a budget of over $160M and a team of 120 employees.
Ileana was also the Regional CIO for Latin America. She and her team were responsible for managing IT related client interactions for the Product and Services Sales organizations, which account for over $2.4B in revenue. Prior to this role, she was the Director of IS for client engagement practice within the Technical Services IT group. She managed business interactions with IT, client relations on business projects, strategic planning, and alignment with the Technical Services organization.
Before joining Cisco, Ileana held leadership roles at TAOS and Stryker advising executive clients in the areas of supply chain, operations, traffic, and IT. She also has over 13 years of experience in the life science/medical device industry. Ileana became an active member of the Business and Technology Council, working to align IT priorities and vision with business imperatives and long-term strategy.
As a trained engineer, Ileana understands the value of service and mentorship in advancing women and Hispanic IT professionals. She served on the board of the Hispanic IT Executive Council (HITEC) and is a member of Conexión (Cisco’s Latino Employee Resource Group) and Cisco Connected Women.
Ileana has an engineering degree from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez campus, and a master’s degree in information systems from the University of San Francisco, California. Ileana has notable honors and has participated in several speaking engagements. Ileana is bilingual (English/Spanish).
Keith Griffin
Keith Griffin joined Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group in 2007 and is a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco focused on AI and Machine Learning in the office of CTO. He has worked on features that include Webex Assistant, Noise Removal, Relationship Intelligence, Facial recognition, Meeting Transcription and more. Keith helped to form Cisco’s Responsible AI framework from initial machine learning data privacy through to todays responsible AI framework for generative AI and large language models.
Keith works with customers, partners and analysts to ensure that technology direction is aligned with market needs. He leads Cisco’s Collaboration IP, Patent and Research strategy and has been Cisco’s top inventor for collaboration technology for over ten years.
Keith holds a PhD from the University of Limerick in Ireland related to the use of Representational State Transfer (REST) programmable interface design for real time communication in web browsers. His major in computer engineering at university was virtual reality in manufacturing environments.
Julie Canepa
Julie Canepa has over 25 years’ IT leadership experience empowering people, process, and technology to transform business and IT and has been named in CIO Magazine’s Top 50 CIOs in Australia, five years running.
She currently serves as Director of Digital Transformation and CIO Advisory for Cisco Asia Pacific, Japan and China (APJC). She and her Digital Transformation organisation create partnerships that lead to successful go-to-market with strategic customers across the region. In addition, Julie advises CxO leaders across the region on how to design and lead transformation strategies that drive digital outcomes impacting growth, productivity, and user experience and how to foster improved synergies between business leadership, operations, and IT.
Prior to this, Julie served as Cisco APJC Chief Information Officer where she was responsible for IT service delivery in the APJC region and has also held several leadership positions at Cisco worldwide in Sales, Commerce, Supply Chain Systems and Operations.
Julie is a strong advocate for STEM education, women in technology as well as diversity, equity and inclusion activities. She serves on the Board of the Diversity Council of Australia, the Industry Advisory Board at the University of Sydney’s School of Computer Science and is a Member of Cisco’s Global Inclusion and Diversity in IT Team and Executive Sponsor for Cisco’s Women of Cisco Program in Australia and New Zealand.
