Dallas, United States — November 2025 — Nicole Scheffler has announced her return to Cisco in the role of Managed Services Partner Executive, marking a meaningful homecoming to the company where her technology career began. Nicole shared that joining Cisco as an Associate Systems Engineer early in her career shaped her passion for innovation and partnerships, and after 15 years inside the organization, she continued her journey across leading technology firms—gaining deep experience in cybersecurity, cloud, solution development, service scaling, and global partner ecosystems.
In her new role at Cisco, Nicole will drive scalable growth through strategic managed services initiatives, partnering with Global Systems Integrators and IT Service Providers to co-create and scale market-ready offerings built on Cisco technologies. Her work will support Cisco’s strategy of strengthening real-time customer experiences, accelerating AI at the edge, and enabling future-ready technology ecosystems with the power of its global partner community.
Before returning to Cisco, Nicole Scheffler served as Global Solution Director at Palo Alto Networks, where she guided strategy for network security, SASE, AI, and OT solutions. She was responsible for solution development with GSIs, technical strategy, service frameworks, and partner enablement — a role that earned her recognition, including a 2025 CRN Women of the Channel award.
Prior to Palo Alto Networks, Nicole worked at VMware as Enterprise Engineering Manager, where she led a high-performing solutions architecture function supporting modernization, hybrid environments, remote work enablement, and secure workload scalability across enterprise customers in the Great Lakes region.
Nicole previously spent more than 15 years at Cisco, progressing through multiple technical and leadership roles, including Americas Partner Organization Engineering Strategy & Planning Manager, Partner Solutions Architect, Security Consulting Systems Engineer, and Technical Marketing Engineer. During her tenure, she played a key role in partner ecosystem strategy, emerging technology readiness, and engineering enablement across the Americas — earning several distinctions including:
- Chairman’s Club Sales Award
- Americas Partner Organization Solution Architect of the Year
- US Partner Organization Engineering Excellence of the Year
Her early career contributions also included roles at Fidelity Investments and teaching support at the University of North Texas, where she built foundational experience in programming, SDLC frameworks, and enterprise system deployment.
About Cisco
Cisco is a global leader in secure networking, digital infrastructure, and AI-powered technology innovation. For more than 40 years, Cisco has helped organizations connect, protect, and transform their operations with solutions spanning AI, networking, security, observability, collaboration, and automation. Today, Cisco continues to power innovation at scale — supporting customers, partners, and communities through digital resilience, cloud-first solutions, and a commitment to building an inclusive, sustainable, and securely connected future for all.
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