Chuck Robbins has been Cisco's CEO since July 2015 and Chair since December 2017, after joining in 1997 and rising through worldwide field operations and sales leadership. He holds a B.S. in Mathematical Sciences from UNC Chapel Hill and sits on the boards of BlackRock and the Business Roundtable. “The network is truly more important than the node.”

Jeetu Patel was promoted to President & Chief Product Officer effective May 2025, having been EVP & Chief Product Officer since 2024 and previously running Cisco's Security and Collaboration business after joining in 2020. Before Cisco he was Chief Product/Strategy Officer at Box. He holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois Chicago and serves on the boards of Equinix and JLL. “These agents are operating at machine speed... humans click, but agents swarm.”

Liz Centoni has been Cisco's EVP & Chief Customer Experience Officer since March 2024, leading its ~$15B services organization (~20,000 employees). She previously served as EVP & Chief Strategy Officer and GM of Applications, and sits on the supervisory board of Mercedes-Benz and the board of Workday. (The briefing's "Chief Technology and Strategy Officer" title is outdated/incorrect.) “AI-enabled attacks can now map your entire network in minutes... This is the Mythos moment, and the question is, how are you meeting it?”

Tom Gillis leads Cisco's Infrastructure & Security Group, expanded in December 2024 to span silicon, optics, networking, security and network services. A repeat security entrepreneur, he was a founding exec at IronPort, co-founder/CEO of Bracket Computing (acquired by VMware), and ran VMware's Networking and Advanced Security group. He holds an MBA from Harvard and an MSEE from Northwestern.

Anurag Dhingra leads Cisco's Enterprise Connectivity and Collaboration Group, overseeing Meraki, Catalyst, Industrial IoT, ThousandEyes and Cisco Collaboration. He was previously CTPO for Cisco's Collaboration business and head of engineering for Webex Meetings, and founding executive sponsor of Cisco's Responsible AI Framework. He holds a degree from NIT Kurukshetra, India. “That is very important... build up that confidence.”

Kamal Hathi runs the Splunk Business Unit inside Cisco following the $28B acquisition. He spent most of his career at Microsoft as a founding GM of its data analytics business (SQL Server, Power BI), then served as CTO of DocuSign. He holds an M.S. from Case Western Reserve and a B.E. from M.S. University of Baroda. “Cloud Control is amazing... Unifying data across application, network, infrastructure.”

DJ (Dhananjay) Sampath leads Cisco's unified AI software and platform vision. A repeat founder, he joined Cisco in 2023 via its acquisition of Armorblox, the AI-cybersecurity startup he founded; earlier he was a founding VP of Engineering at StackRox (acquired by Red Hat). He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from UC Santa Cruz. “It's not just about humans clicking through dashboards trying to keep up, but a true collaborative operating model where agents are doing the heavy lifting and humans are staying in control of what matters.”

Jeff Schultz is SVP of Portfolio Strategy at Cisco, leading cross-architecture product messaging and reporting to Jeetu Patel. He was previously VP and Chief Strategy Officer for Cisco's Security and Collaboration division, with prior leadership roles at Splunk, Box, EMC and Bill.com. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UT Austin. “Every action that an agent takes is a combination of a routing challenge, a trust decision and a telemetry event.”

Brian Niccol became Starbucks Chairman & CEO in September 2024, succeeding Laxman Narasimhan. He previously led Chipotle as CEO and Chairman and Taco Bell as CEO, after roles at Yum! Brands and a decade at Procter & Gamble. He holds an MBA from Chicago Booth. “We're spending a lot of time right now on supply chain forecasting.”

Hasmukh Ranjan has been AMD's SVP & CIO since April 2022, leading a global IT organization of roughly 1,000 people through an AI-powered transformation. He previously held the same role at Xilinx and was CIO at Synopsys, bringing 20+ years of global IT leadership. He studied at Northwestern's Kellogg School. “That [tokenomics] line item never existed a few years back.”

Scott Malone is VP of IT Infrastructure at GEODIS, the global supply-chain and logistics provider, responsible for infrastructure modernization on Cisco platforms. At Cisco Live 2026 he served as an enterprise reference customer for Cisco IQ-driven operations. “When I first saw what Cisco IQ surfaced, it felt too good to be true.”

John Hoenemier is Director of Data Network Security at GlobalFoundries, overseeing network security operations in a high-availability semiconductor-manufacturing environment. At Cisco Live 2026 he served as a reference customer for Cisco IQ-driven vulnerability management. (Independent biographical sources are limited; identity confirmed via Cisco CL26 coverage.) “You cannot navigate what is coming with a map, when what you really need is a GPS.”