Cisco Honors Technology Leader; Awards $100,000 Scholarship

Cisco Systems recently honored the achievements of Cisco Fellow, Fred Baker, who has just completed a five-year term as Chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and is returning to Cisco full time. Known throughout the industry for his technological innovations, leadership and integrity, Baker is being awarded by Cisco with a $100,000 donation in his name to the Cisco Networking Academy Program. Baker has chosen to allocate the funds to the Cisco's Least Developed Country (LDC) initiative in Francophone Africa with a focus on expanding and improving teacher training.

A 23-year veteran of the telecommunications industry, Baker joined Cisco in 1994 and was awarded recognition as a Cisco Fellow in 1998. In this role, Baker is involved in guiding Cisco's technical direction and advancing state of the art technology. His primary interest is the improvement of Quality-of-Service (QoS) for best effort and real time traffic. In addition to product development, Baker advises Cisco's senior management of industry directions and corporate strategies. For the past five years, Baker's principal standards contributions have been to the IETF, in the areas of Network Management, Routing, PPP and Frame Relay, the Integrated and Differentiated Services architectures, and the RSVP signaling protocol. At the IETF, Baker authored and edited more than 30 RFCs (Requests for Comments) related to IP routing, various interface technologies, QoS, and Network Management.

"At Cisco, philanthropy is a large part of the corporate culture. Baker's decision to use this grant to help those in need and spread the Internet to Least Developed Countries is not only honorable, but representative of how Cisco is changing the world," said Mike Volpi, Cisco's Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President.

The Cisco Networking Academy Program is a partnership between Cisco and education, business, government and community organizations around the world. The Program is dedicated to teaching students to design, build, and maintain computer networks, while preparing for the 21st century workplace. To-date, the Cisco Networking Academy Program is active in over 130 countries, with over 7100 Academies and more than 135,000 enrolled students.

The $100,000 being donated to the LDC will work to create a "super regional academy" in Western Africa, serving several countries with technical support and communication. Baker is a firm believer in the model that "teaching the teacher ultimately helps more students." Baker's goal is to help lead the effort toward the proliferation of the Internet in Africa and provide opportunity on the continent for expanded training and IT.

Claudia C. Church is a freelance journalist, speechwriter and entertainment writer. She is based out of New York City.