Negocios Now

NegociosNow NegociosNow www.negociosnow.com 14 Diciembre 2008 14 Marzo 2017 FROM 'THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS' TO CORPORATE CIO By Tara García Mathewson W hen Guillermo Diaz started working at Cis- co in 2000, he thought he would probably be with the company about seven years. That had been his standard tenure at jobs before Cisco so it seemed likely he would be ready for a change in about the same timeline. Seven years passed. The seven more. Diaz still hasn't left, and as chief information officer, he has filled pretty much every role in the IT leadership structure. He was hired to work on infras- tructure and ultimately helped create an architecture for Cisco's e-commerce system that today brings in $48 billion in business annually. His latest challenge is helping the multinational tech- nology conglomerate transform into a digital company. Just like Cisco helps its clients do — digitize their businesses and take advantage of the resul- ting efficiency — Diaz is orches- trating the same transformation from the head of the technology team inside a massive technolo- gy company. And like most business owners today know, a key challenge of going digital is doing it securely. "When you go fast sometimes you lose the mindset of com- pliance and security and all of the things that you need to make sure your business is safe," Diaz said. "You've got to do those — it's not just one or the other, it's both." Diaz's path to CIO is an ins- piring one. He grew up "on the wrong side of the tracks" in Pue- blo, Colorado, a small city about 115 miles south of Denver. He went into the Navy as a stepping stone to a degree. No one else in his family had graduated from college but it was a major goal of his, and enlisting gave him the financial support to make it happen. Incidentally, the Navy also set him on his path in IT. "That's when I really learned about this thing called telecom- munications and networking," Diaz said. "Growing up on the east side of Pueblo, Colorado, I didn't know what that meant." Diaz further credits the Navy with forcing him to learn to communicate with all types of people. His neighborhood was almost entirely Latino, growing up, and he says the Navy at the time was probably 90 percent something else. Those learning experiences have provided a foundation for his work at Cisco, where he makes a point of con- necting with everybody, priori- tizing relationship-building to improve workflow and output. According to data from the U.S. Equal Employment Oppor- tunity Commission, Latinos make up just 5.3 percent of pro- fessionals in the nation's tech industry. Diaz feels comforta- ble working in a very different world from the one in which he grew up, but he invests a good amount of time trying to diver- sify the ranks, too. He is a leader on Cisco's Diversity Council and he is the executive sponsor of Conexión, the company's His- panic/Latino employee resource network. Diaz said he has helped for- ge connections with Hispanic- serving institutions and histori- cally black colleges to diversify the university pipeline for Cisco employees — which accounts for the vast majority of new hires company-wide. He has also hel- ped create a new pipeline for veterans, who get operational and security training in the mili- tary than can be well-suited for a career at Cisco. Diaz talks to young people like himself regularly and hears often that they aren't sure they can ever make it to where he is. He tells them if he was in their shoes, there's no reason they can't end up in his one day. His work responsibilities earn him the title of chief information officer, but Diaz calls that his job — something different from his purpose. "I'm very blessed to be in this job, but my purpose is to inspi- re forward," Diaz said. "Inspirar hacia adelante." His story alone can do just that. Foto Cisco Guillermo Diaz, Chief Information Officer, is helping Cisco transform into a digital company. SILICON VALLEY LATINOS IN TECHNOLOGY NegociosNow NegociosNow El Especial

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