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Day on the Job: Cisco Systems

The Haas School hosted a DOJ on November 30th at Cisco Systems where I represented the GSM in a raging sea of Haas students. The DOJ at Cisco involved presentations by their social responsibility division in which they gave a 3-hour overview of some of the projects they had going on. The goals of Cisco’s social responsibility arm are to aid with basic human needs, education, and increase opportunity.

One of Cisco’s key new CSR projects is Partnership for Lebanon where they are involved with a number of high tech companies, such as Microsoft, to spur development in Lebanon with the aim to make the country an economic example for the Middle East. The program is still working out the kinks, but involves developing Cisco’s Network Academies and hiring Lebanese interns.

We also heard from Amy Christen who is the head of Cisco’s Network Academies Program. The Network Academies Program gives curricula and machines to public and private institutions around the world to (even countries without Cisco presence) in order to develop skill sets of the locals in order to increase economic opportunities and to allow Network Academy graduates to develop a region’s internet and tech economy by being able to build and maintain networks, even if they do not work with Cisco.

Cisco representatives discussed the company’s corporate social responsibility initiatives and a little of what was behind each. The CSR programs discussed were the Cisco Network Academies, Global Education Initiative (improving schools in Jordan), 21S (improving education in Southeast U.S.), Partnership for Lebanon, N.E.P.A.D. (African development), and the Sub-Saharan Africa Initiative (to increase investment in three Sub-Saharan African countries).

Mitch Jones, GSM '09