Hilton Romanski leads Business Development at Cisco.  In this role, he is responsible for driving Cisco’s M&A strategy and managing its over $2 billion private investment portfolio.  Mr. Romanski has extensive experience investing in and acquiring private and public companies around the world across all stages of maturity. 

Over the past decade, Mr. Romanski has helped build the team of M&A and investment professionals that he now leads.  He has been responsible for more than 30 of Cisco’s most significant acquisitions, including Starent Networks and Airespace.  More recently, Mr. Romanski led Cisco’s $5.0 billion acquisition of NDS, one of the largest private technology acquisitions in history, and the $1.2 billion acquisition of Meraki, enabling significant business model transition in Cisco’s Unified Access portfolio.  Mr. Romanski has been at the forefront of Cisco’s entry into multiple new markets, including mobility, security and software-enabled solutions.  In addition to leading growth in key technology sectors, Mr. Romanski led Cisco’s M&A and investment entry into the emerging markets in the 2000s through forming and expanding teams and activities across key geographies, including China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.   Mr. Romanski also engineered Cisco’s recently-announced divestiture of the Linksys home networking business. 

Mr. Romanski has also served as an executive in Cisco’s operating business.  From 2010 to 2012, he was chief strategist for Cisco’s Service Provider Business − an over $14 billion annual revenue segment for Cisco.  In this role, Mr. Romanski  was responsible for setting the long-range strategy for new SP-oriented products, services and business models, including areas such as Small Radio and Network Monetization.  Mr. Romanski returned to Business Development in 2011, playing both corporate and segment roles, until focusing full time on Business Development in 2012.   

Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. Romanski was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan.  He worked in the firm’s Technology, Media and Telecom group, based in San Francisco.  He previously worked in J.P. Morgan’s New York office where he was an M&A specialist.

Mr. Romanski earned his M.B.A. from Stanford University and his B.A. from Columbia University.

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