Padmasree Warrior

Warrior served as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and also co-led Cisco’s worldwide engineering organization. As Senior Vice President, Engineering, she was responsible for core switching, collaboration, cloud computing and data center/virtualization, security, and architectures for business transformation.

Warrior joined Cisco in 2007. Prior to that, she was executive vice president and CTO at Motorola. Under her leadership, Motorola was awarded the 2004 National Medal of Technology.

Warrior has been widely recognized for her creative, visionary leadership. Forbes has named her one of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” for two years running. In 2013, The International Alliance for Women gave her the World of Difference Award, Silicon Valley’s SVForum honored her with the Visionary Award, the American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin gave her the Excellence in Engineering, Science and Technology Award, and the International Museum of Women presented her with the Innovator Award for Women in Technology. In 2012, Business Insider called her one of the “25 Most Influential Women in Wireless,” the Aspen Institute gave her the first Leadership in Science and Technology Award, India’s National Association of Software & Service Companies named her the Global CTO Award winner, and CloudNOW recognized her with the first Top 10 Women in Cloud Award. The Wall Street Journal has called Warrior one of “50 Women to Watch,” Fast Company included her among the “100 Most Creative People in Business,” and The Economic Times listed her as “the 11th Most Influential Global Indian.”

Warrior has served on government initiatives, industry advisory boards, and charitable and community organizations. She received the United States Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce’s Excellence Award and YWCA Metropolitan Chicago’s Outstanding Woman of Achievement Award. In 2007 she was inducted into the Women in Information Technology International Hall of Fame. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for Cornell University and serves on the Gap Inc. Board of Directors. She also sits on the Board of Directors for Thorn (formerly DNA Foundation).

Warrior holds a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi and a master of science degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University.