Everyone here at Cisco is overjoyed at the recent announcement that Amy Chang, our Senior Vice President in the Collaboration Technology Group, has been named one of America's "Top 50 Women in Tech" by Forbes. You can read the story here. The great thing about this list is that to even qualify for nomination, you must be a hands-on professional. Even those who hold C-suite positions must prove they are actively involved in changing the world. That's something that Amy has in abundance. Perhaps the best illustration of her vision is the wonderfully simple three-word phrase she likes to say: "bridges, not islands."

We have seen a tremendous amount of movement and growth in the area ofcommunication and collaboration, especially in the past two decades. But as numerous experts have observed, never have we been so connected and disconnected at the same time. For every email sent, an opportunity for enhancing a relationship is lost. For every digital message that is misinterpreted, time is wasted in clarification and repetition. For every conference call and videoconference that is delayed by technical snafus, progress is sabotaged.

Amy helped set the record straight in her Cisco Partner Summit speech in November 2018, as to how Cisco can take the lead in rectifying these types of problems and create a seamless and reliable platform for real human communication. She acknowledged the responsibility our company has in impacting over 300 million people's lives -a number that is growing daily. So, to address this, she envisions a strategy of simplification.

"This means ensuring our products work beautifully together as well as interoperating with other products. We exist in an ecosystem," she says, "and we have to start acting like it."

There are many bridges for Cisco to build, and Amy embraces them all with gusto. Such as:

• Unified Jabber and Webex Teams, to help customers avoid the need for a hard cutover and instead enjoy one unified experience, based on a hybrid cloud, for calling, messaging, and meetings
• A new Webex interface, including huddle spaces and the new Webex Share
• A market-dominating cloud calling solution based out of our acquisition of BroadSoft
• Innovations in security and PCI compliance
• Use of AI and ML to prioritize customers' incoming calls and queries on a bot basis, and raising the customer/sales rep relationship to new, more sophisticated heights
• Integration of Facebook Messenger and Apple Business Chat
• API hooks -some already in place -to increase productivity in areas ranging from workers' compensation boards, to higher education vertical, workplace analytics, and telepresence

Amy is living proof that when we build bridges, we win hearts and minds, and when we do this with quality and predictability, we, and our customers all win. It's a remarkable time to be in business and it is people like her who show the world just what can be done with the right team.

Learn more about  Amy's vision for the future of Collaboration in her blog, "Building Bridges -Not Islands." There you will learn more about how huddle spaces are becoming the new norm for the modern workplace, and how video conferencing equipment like Webex Room Kit Mini and Webex Share help your teams get more work done.