Pankaj Patel

Pankaj Patel General Information

Biography

Mr. Pankaj Patel serves as Lead Director and Board Member at Versa Networks. He serves as an Advisor at Arrcus. He co-founded Jarvis. He also served as a Senior Advisor at March Capital Partners. He serves as a Board Member at Kmesh. He serves as an Investor and Advisor at The Fabric. Previously, he served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer at Cisco Systems. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of Cisco's $36.3 billion technology portfolio across a global team of more than 28,000 employees. He also helps define Cisco's technology innovation strategy to transform how people connect, communicate, and collaborate through integrated hardware and software platforms and architectures from Cisco's routing, switching, security, mobility, video, collaboration, data center, and cloud offerings. In previous roles at Cisco, he served as Senior Vice President and General Manager for the company's service provider business, which achieved market segment leadership in routing, video, and mobility under his leadership. He was a founding leader of Cisco's first multi-service access business unit, developing a strategy for access routers and voice-over-packet technology and delivery. He was also responsible for the Cisco IGX product line and software development for all Cisco ATM switches. He joined Cisco through the company's acquisition of Stratacom in 1996. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Redback Networks, where he was responsible for the development and delivery of all Redback products. Earlier in his career, he founded a consulting company focused on application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design, software, and CAD tools. Customers included EMC, Hewlett-Packard, and other major corporations that looked to his firm to design ASIC technologies for their computing, storage, and networking products. He also held various senior management positions at Apollo Computer/HP and Digital Equipment Corporation. He is an industry member of the Dean's Advisory Committee of UCLA's School of Engineering and maintains ongoing involvement in Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. He also serves on the Board of Directors of The Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute, which is dedicated to catalyzing and accelerating the discovery, development, and delivery of new and more effective treatment options for lung cancer patients. He holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India, and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2003, he was awarded a patent in the area of multi-service architecture.