It is with great pleasure I introduce you to another industry and technology thought-leader from Cisco, Clara Alvarado.

Clara Alvarado is Cisco's Solutions Marketing Manager for Applications Enablement and Management portfolio for the Internet of Things group, with an industry bias towards Oil and Gas. In that position Clara develops the strategy and requirements for the programs and initiatives needed to successfully execute on the strategy, ensure the alignment of the channels, sales, technical operations and support teams, and serves as a liaison between Cisco's IoT Business Group, customers, partners and sales teams.

Clara has been in Cisco in various executive roles for 7 years, having joined Cisco in 2007 as Marketing Operations Manager for Latin America. She then moved to lead the Collaboration Solution portfolio in Emerging Markets and recently moved to corporate marketing where she has been responsible for strategy, sales enablement and demand generation projects around cloud and joint marketing activities with strategic ecosystem partners.

Prior to Cisco, Clara Alvarado held several roles in marketing and business development in companies such as Lucent Technology, Avaya and Emerson Electric (Emerson are a strong partner of Cisco, we won't talk about the other two!). She holds a BS in Electronic Engineer form Universidad Javeriana, a MBA from Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia and a Competitive Strategic Marketing Diploma from Wharton Business School.

Welcome Clara!