Elisabeth De Dobbeleer

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer became leader of Cisco’s EMEAR Partner Organisation in March 2020. She is responsible for developing strategic growth initiatives and transformation programmes to positively impact Cisco’s partner business as the Company evolves its portfolio and invests in customer lifecycle management. A key focus of her role is to enhance the experience partners have with Cisco, and as part of this journey her team recently expanded to incorporate the Security Partner Specialist teams and Premier SPaaCH teams. Elisabeth works closely with Cisco’s channel partners, who represent the Company's primary route to market, and the Global Partner Organisation to grow profitable business together. In addition to her Partner role, Elisabeth is also an executive sponsor for a few customers in Europe, as well as for Kenya and East Africa. She has been at Cisco for 20 years in a variety of global and regional roles, leveraging her legal background, but also her change agent, operational and business development skills. Originally from Belgium, where she is currently based, she spent eight years abroad in roles based out of APJC, the Middle East and Africa. In her previous role, Elisabeth was Vice President & Deputy General Counsel and led the EMEAR Legal Sales team to support the business across EMEAR while dealing with transactional, compliance, regulatory and other matters. Before this, she led the Legal team that provides support to Cisco’s services business and delivers strategic consulting, plus advanced and technical services solutions to customers and partners worldwide, as well as Cisco’s cloud strategy. In an earlier role she was Business Operations Director for the Middle East and Africa and led a team providing strategy, planning and operational support. She also worked in the Brand Protection team managing a global anti-counterfeit operational and engineering team, who worked with Cisco’s Channel and Manufacturing operations in reducing the impact of counterfeit activities on the business. Elisabeth joined Cisco in 2000 as the Corporate Counsel for BeNeLux and Channels EMEAR. Before joining Cisco, she completed her legal training at Stibbe in Brussels, Belgium. She holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School, and graduated Law School from Catholic Leuven University in Belgium (including a Bachelor Law Degree from Universite de Notre Dame de la Paix de Namur).