David Ashley

David Ashley is the Senior Vice President of Product Operations at Cisco Systems. His global organization of 850+ has the responsibility for end-to-end life cycle management of all Cisco branded products (Hardware, Software, Cloud) with a heavy emphasis on new product market launches and offer enablement. He manages the integration of the development and fulfillment supply chains to support all delivery and consumption models. Product Operations is the primary interface to all Business Units within Cisco.

In addition to David’s previous role as Vice President of Product Operations, his responsibilities have expanded to lead the development and implementation of the supply chain strategy and offer/service enablement to support enterprise goals. David also leads Cloud and Software enablement for operations. His strong leadership will lead Cisco through a transformational change to optimize performance and efficiency of product operations, supply chain and related functions globally.

Prior to his position as Vice President, David Ashley led Cisco’s Technology and Quality organization, a global team responsible for delivering customer-driven quality and reliability solutions in support of Cisco’s development supply chain. The team under David’s leadership is committed to drive a competitive advantage for Cisco by ensuring innovation and excellence in manufacturing technology, test and component engineering, advanced technology development, and closed-loop quality management.He launched several key initiatives with his team that championed improvements throughout the manufacturing process and extend visibility and collaboration deeper into the global supply chain, while continuously raising the bar on quality.

Since joining Cisco in June 2000, David has held various leadership positions throughout the supply chain. In a previous role, he managed the Service Provider and Enterprise and led the transformation of the Product Operations team, which resulted in increasing the organization’s scope beyond new product introduction to include the total product lifecycle.

Prior to Cisco, David held various management and engineering positions at Lucent Technologies and AT&T, starting his career as a design engineer for Bell Labs responsible for the design of telecommunication systems.

David has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.

He is the father of a 23-year-old daughter, who recently graduated from Southern Methodist University college with an Engineering and Math degree, and a 20-year-old son, currently attending New York University. His wife, Karen Ashley, is a Vice President of Mergers & Acquisitions at Cisco. As a family, they enjoy skiing and spending time together outdoors.