Amy Chang (Cisco) - Networking with Curiosity

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Journey, Startups, Education, Stanford, Culture, Strategy, Stanford University, Entrepreneurship, Business, Life Lessons, Thought Leadership, Creativity, Etl, Challenges, Leadership, Innovation, Founders

4.4 • 739 Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amy Chang is an executive vice president at Cisco. Following the acquisition of her startup Accompany by Cisco in 2018, she led Cisco's multi-billion dollar Collaboration business and its Webex portfolio. In this talk, she describes an approach to networking that’s built on affinity and even friendship rather than short-term, transactional goals. She shares how her relationships and network shaped her career as she navigated a path from electrical engineering at Stanford to her current roles at Cisco and on the Proctor & Gamble board, with formative stops at McKinsey, Google, and elsewhere.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Who you are defines how you build. This is Thought Leaders Revisited, a special summer
0:09.5	2020 edition of our Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series. During this summer of uncertainty,
0:16.0	we're inviting some of the most influential past ETL speakers to join us for a series of new conversations
0:22.3	about innovation, leadership, and especially finding opportunities in the midst of a crisis.
0:29.2	On this episode, we're joined by Cisco's Executive Vice President, Amy Chang.
0:34.3	Following the acquisition of her startup by Cisco in 2018, Amy led Cisco's
0:39.9	multi-billion-dollar collaboration business and its WebEx portfolio. She serves on the board
0:46.4	of Procter & Gamble and is an advisor to companies including HubSpot, Bloom Reach, and Origami
0:52.2	Logic. Oftentimes our Stanford students when they're graduating, and Origami Logic. Oftentimes, our Stanford students, when they're
0:56.1	graduating, and I think even anybody, is always wrestling with what to do with their lives.
1:00.9	And some people may be thinking about, should I work at a startup? Should I work at one of the
1:06.3	Valley's bellwether companies like Cisco or Google? Or should I go to McKinsey and do a consulting company?
1:11.9	Well, you have done all of those. And so I think you are a rare, a rare singularity that I really
1:18.5	want to actually allow our students to understand your advice and insight into all those different
1:23.4	experiences. And really, I get at the heart of this issue of what should I do. There are certain
1:29.4	questions that I think are timeless that our students always wrestle with, which is like, what
1:33.9	should I do? And then there's especially items around that that are particularly unique, given the
1:37.8	weird times that we're living in. And so with that, I wanted to start by double-clicking
1:42.2	on one of the themes that you brought up
1:44.6	in your first talk, which was really unearthing this notion of following your gut and understanding
1:52.3	when your body is trying to tell you something or when you really are trying to get honing
1:58.4	in on what you're supposed to do and what you're not supposed to do.
	...

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