Tech veteran Jose van Dijk looks back on his 25-year tenure at Cisco

Silver anniversary celebration

Cisco veteran Jose Van Dijk will ring in 25 years with the San Jose, Calif., tech giant this month.

Van Dijk, one of CRN’s Power 100 Most Powerful Women of 2022, began her career as a supply chain coordinator for Texas Instruments. She then managed Apple’s customer service before landing at Cisco, where she spent the last quarter century. Most recently, she served as Vice President of Operations and Partner Performance at Cisco’s Global Partner Organization. Prior to that, she was the Head and Leader of the Transformation Office for Cisco’s Customer Experience organization, where she was responsible for aligning the organization’s strategic initiatives, innovation leadership and growth. She also established Cisco’s first decentralized customer service organizations in Asia-Pacific and Japan.

Starting in August, she took on a new title: vice president, partner performance and practice organization. Now, van Dijk is responsible for managing and improving experiences and the day-to-day operations of Cisco partners. She and her team manage partner performance and over the past three years have been busy digitizing processes and tools for solution providers in Cisco’s global partner organization, aligning with Cisco’s field organization.

Suffice it to say, Van Dijk has learned a lot along the way about the characteristics of technology procurement, customer experience, the tight ties vendors must build with solution providers, and perhaps most importantly, the importance of a strong company culture that cares about its employees. Inside and outside the workplace.

Van Dijk sat down with CRN to talk about her amazing career and share tips from the lessons she’s picked up along the way. The following are excerpts from the discussion.