Pankaj Patel

Pankaj Patel is a Partner and the Chief Strategy Officer of JC2 Ventures. Patel is a proven results-oriented and seasoned technology leader with 25+ years of experience developing highly scalable products and services by building and leading large, high-performance global engineering organizations, setting a clear vision, directing a strategy and delivering against goals. As passionate as he is about translating strategy to execution, he is equally, if not more, passionate about delivering the best experience for the customer. He has consistently achieved that by delivering innovative solutions that matter to the customer, fueled by simplicity, speed and agility.

Previously, Patel had a stellar career at Cisco Systems as the Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer, running and growing multi-billion-dollar products and businesses across service provider and enterprise market segments. He reported to the CEO as the engineering head of the company’s $38 billion product and solution portfolio and drove the business and technology strategy across Cisco’s Routing, Switching, Wireless, Security, Mobility, Video, Collaboration, Data Center and Cloud offerings, delivered by a global team of more than 28,000 engineers. Patel was also responsible for defining the priorities and investment allocation of $6 billion in R&D spend annually.

Moreover, during his tenure at Cisco, Patel launched the biggest transformation of engineering, unparalleled in the company’s 30-year history, driving a culture of innovation (and the best place to work), agility (changing the engineers’ experience), portfolio (what we build to grow in current and new markets), new recurring business models and internal startups.

Patel retired from Cisco at the end of October 2016, and now serves on the Board of Directors of several startups. He is focused on incubating and advising startups with their strategy, go-to-market, growth and scale.

Patel is a leader who prides himself in helping his teams achieve success. In addition to enabling the careers and business success of many executives (past and present), he is a mentor and sponsor to numerous employees throughout the company and the industry.