Ish Limkakeng

SVP, People, Policy & Purpose Technology Strategy

Ishmael (Ish) Limkakeng is the Senior Vice President of People, Policy & Purpose Technology Strategy, responsible for leading the next generation of Cisco’s circular design transformation, and providing guidance to stakeholders on how best to leverage Cisco’s technology to further the company’s Purpose strategy in the interest of our customers’ goals.

Ish is an accomplished leader with broad business expertise and deep technical knowledge in networking. He is known for setting visionary goals for the future, with practical execution and engineering excellence to bring new markets to reality. Coaching teams to reach beyond what they think is possible is the cornerstone of Ish’s leadership philosophy, and it goes hand-in-hand with his practical visionary mindset. 

Prior to this role, Ish was the Senior Vice President & General Manager of Cloud Networking, where he was responsible for the cloud networking solutions portfolio, and set the strategy and led the engineering team in transforming Cisco’s customers’ data center infrastructure to a cloud-managed, cloud-delivered hybrid cloud architecture.  

Before that, Ish was Senior Vice President of Cisco’s Customer Solutions Marketing where he drove messaging, promotion and positioning of the Cisco portfolio. He served as the executive champion orchestrating and interconnecting resources across Sales, Marketing and Engineering to ensure a clear and consistent marketing strategy for Cisco’s technology portfolio.

He also led Cisco’s Customer Experience Product Management organization as Senior Vice President. Under his leadership, the team built a comprehensive portfolio of software and service offerings to deliver exceptional customer outcomes.

During Ish’s nearly 25 years at Cisco, he pioneered Cisco’s earliest innovations in Software Defined Networking. Most recently under his leadership, his team built the foundation for the next generation of data centers with the evolution of the Nexus portfolio to 400G/800G, and Nexus Cloud, the latest innovation in delivering customers a practical model to adopt and adapt their multi-cloud networking needs.

Ish holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the College of Arts and Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a MBA from Harvard Business School

Ishmael (Ish) Limkakeng is the Senior Vice President of People, Policy & Purpose Technology Strategy, responsible for leading the next generation of Cisco’s circular design transformation, and providing guidance to stakeholders on how best to leverage Cisco’s technology to further the company’s Purpose strategy in the interest of our customers’ goals.

Ish is an accomplished leader with broad business expertise and deep technical knowledge in networking. He is known for setting visionary goals for the future, with practical execution and engineering excellence to bring new markets to reality. Coaching teams to reach beyond what they think is possible is the cornerstone of Ish’s leadership philosophy, and it goes hand-in-hand with his practical visionary mindset. 

Prior to this role, Ish was the Senior Vice President & General Manager of Cloud Networking, where he was responsible for the cloud networking solutions portfolio, and set the strategy and led the engineering team in transforming Cisco’s customers’ data center infrastructure to a cloud-managed, cloud-delivered hybrid cloud architecture.  

Before that, Ish was Senior Vice President of Cisco’s Customer Solutions Marketing where he drove messaging, promotion and positioning of the Cisco portfolio. He served as the executive champion orchestrating and interconnecting resources across Sales, Marketing and Engineering to ensure a clear and consistent marketing strategy for Cisco’s technology portfolio.

He also led Cisco’s Customer Experience Product Management organization as Senior Vice President. Under his leadership, the team built a comprehensive portfolio of software and service offerings to deliver exceptional customer outcomes.

During Ish’s nearly 25 years at Cisco, he pioneered Cisco’s earliest innovations in Software Defined Networking. Most recently under his leadership, his team built the foundation for the next generation of data centers with the evolution of the Nexus portfolio to 400G/800G, and Nexus Cloud, the latest innovation in delivering customers a practical model to adopt and adapt their multi-cloud networking needs.

Ish holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the College of Arts and Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a MBA from Harvard Business School