Anna Barker is the Senior Director leading the CX Centers Lisbon team, Cisco’s newest Customer Experience Center globally. This is a technical organization providing engineering delivery support for the full customer experience portfolio – from implementation, adoption, value realization to optimization across Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Russia.
Originally from the UK, she is excited about her new life in Portugal and taking the Center to the next level. Anna’s main goals are to continue the development of the site, accelerate its growth and make it a go-to Center for Cisco in EMEAR and globally. “Overall, Cisco has the best people on the market, and I want CX Centers Lisbon to proudly claim that too.”
A self-proclaimed numbers lover, Anna has a degree in Economics from the University of London and was a Finance Manager at O2 UK before she joined Cisco. In 2006, during a successful attempt to take a leap and try something new, she left the world of finance behind and started her journey in business operations at Cisco. “Both personally and professionally, I always try to live by the following words: if you never try, you will never know what you’re capable of”.
During her tenure at Cisco, she has held senior positions in operational and technical organizations. Anna also led Cisco’s very successful London 2012 Olympics Sponsorship program as Commercial and Games Time Operations Manager. “It was a very challenging experience in a high profile and high-pressure environment but through that I learned a lot about technical services and advanced services, and my main goal became to work within these fields.”
Later as Director of EMEAR Strategy and Business Operations, she drove operational excellence and was responsible for developing the Transformational programs and initiatives for Technical Services in EMEAR. In 2018, Anna relocated to Krakow from the UK to lead Cisco’s Services Delivery Center, both EMEAR and Global CXC Security Technology Groups and CX Centers Krakow.
Currently, she lives in Lisbon with her husband Liam and their two dogs Ronnie and Ruby. Outside of work, Anna enjoys long walks, yoga and traveling – Italy, Hawaii and San Francisco are favorite destinations. Some of the adventures left on her long bucket list are to see the northern lights and visit the remaining islands of Hawaii. Her main goals for the year are to settle in her life in Portugal, connect with her team and get to know the Portuguese culture, language, and cuisine. “The first thing I did in Lisbon was to buy a Pastel de Nata and eat it on the beach with my dogs. They loved the snow in Krakow, but I have a feeling they will much prefer the sand.”
2 Comentários
"if you never try, you will never know what you’re capable of”
Very True 🙂
Very inspiring and wish you all the best Anna. 🙂