Yves Mertens is leading the Cybersecurity go-to-market for EMEAR (Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia) within Cisco’s Global Security Sales Organisation. In this role, he is responsible for developing and executing Cisco’s security channel and service provider strategy, while driving sales growth, profitability, partner enablement and security practice development for Cisco’s Security partners across the region. He works closely with channel partners and distributors to help building security thought leadership in the partner ecosystem and help partners monetising Cisco’s Security solutions. He joined Cisco in 1997 and assumed different roles in the Belux region such as CTO and Head of the presales organisation. In 2005, Yves moved to the EMEAR partner organisation as the Head of Partner Business Management and contributed significantly to an increase in productivity, efficiency, profitability and simplicity for Cisco’s partners. In 2012, Yves took on the leadership of the Partner Organization and Commercial Sales in France, achieving double digit growth. In 2020, he expanded his role to lead the Service Provider market. Yves has started his career at Digital Equipment assuming roles in presales, education, account consultancy and project management. Yves lives in the North of Brussels in Belgium, has been married for 34 years to his wife Ingrid and has three children. He loves a variety of sports like tennis, running and bicycling. Yves speaks fluently Dutch, French and English.