Wendy Mars is President of Cisco’s Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia region.

Her responsibilities focus on driving strategies, which deliver on customer requirements and business objectives, in addition to accelerating growth for Cisco in EMEAR. Wendy is responsible for over $12billion of annual sales, managing operations across 123 countries with over 13,000 employees in the region overall. In her previous role at Cisco, Wendy led the Partner and Enterprise strategy for EMEAR. She managed teams specializing in technology architecture, scalable consumption and software. Prior to this, Wendy led the data center and virtualization teams in EMEAR for several years, after initially joining Cisco as a Systems Engineer Director for the UK and Ireland organization.

Wendy is a passionate supporter of women in business, particularly technology, and is the Executive Sponsor of Cisco’s Connected Women community. She understands the talent and skills challenges facing the technology industry and firmly believes in culture as a driver of digital transformation and differentiation. Wendy is currently leading a number of initiatives designed to encourage the diversity of people, innovation and ideas which will enable Cisco and the industry, respond to and deliver, success for customers.

Prior to joining Cisco, Wendy was the Global CTO at ThruPoint for 11 years, working with primarily with its enterprise and service provider customers. She began her career at Morgan Stanley, where she lived abroad working on a variety of IT programmes in Europe, the US and Asia. Wendy has a BEng(H) in Electronic Engineering from York University and an MSc in Operational Research from Lancaster University.