Kathy Bries

Kathy Bries, joined Learning@Cisco two years ago from Cisco's CDO (Chief Development Office)/Technology group to lead the Learning@Cisco operations team.

She brings to the team over 10 years of networking market knowledge, Business Unit P&L experience, product/engineering management and operations support, as well as cross-team project management leadership. She currently oversees Learning@Cisco’s operations, IT infrastructure investments and overall P&L management.

Kathy started out at Cisco in 1995 as Manager of Product Planning and Pricing, and helped build the foundation for Cisco's product management organization. She had successfully implemented Cisco's product operations, forecasting & pricing processes and rolled out Cisco's first EIS (Executive Information System). She went on to hold a variety of leadership positions.

Before taking her current role, Kathy was the Director of Operations for Cisco’s $6 Billion business unit -High end modular switching and the Datacenter Switching Security technology group. She worked with the General Manager in streamlining overall business unit operations driving both program and process discipline. Under her leadership, the Business Unit successfully passed both ISO and TL9000 audits, is on track to meet its multi billion dollar annual goal while surpassing overall profitability goals by 3%. She had managed the technology group’s overall planning, operational, R&D investments and strategy review process and was instrumental in implementing various Cisco-wide initiatives such as technology portfolio management, engineering best practices, core business acceleration programs, counterfeit protection, college recruiting & women’s leadership program.

Kathy also served as the Director of Operations for Cisco's Service Provider Business Council and helped create and communicate Cisco's overall service provider strategy, goals and long term business plans. She had taken several positions within CDO such as operations staff for the Chief Development officer managing his technology portfolio as well as Cisco's Gigabit transceiver (GBIC) product manager with annual bookings of $100 million.

Kathy graduated from the Harvard Business School. She volunteers for Harvard University and stays active on women and diversity issues. She is member of WAN, WTAN & WIT.