Vicki Batka
Vicki Batka has unveiled plans to vacate her role running the regional partner business at Cisco, departing the vendor following more than six years of channel advocacy and ecosystem enhancement across Asia Pacific, Japan and China (APJC).
Channel Asia can exclusively reveal that Batka -- inducted into the Channel Asia Hall of Fame in 2021 -- is leaving her position as vice president of Partner Organisation in APJC with her next destination yet to be disclosed and a search already underway for her replacement.
“After more than half a decade, Vicki will be leaving Cisco,” said Dave West, president of APJC at Cisco, when speaking to Channel Asia. “During her time here she has had a tremendous impact on our business, culture and most importantly in successfully evolving our partner ecosystem.”
Batka initially joined the technology giant as managing director of Data Centre and Virtualisation armed with a regional remit for market expansion and growth in November 2015. Less than nine months later, the industry figure assumed control of the vendor’s channel go-to-market strategy and an ecosystem housing more than 10,000 partners across the region.
“Some of her key successes include, the building of a channel analytics business and integrating it with existing sales dashboards, the development of the Black Belt specialisation for partners to increase their technical specialisation in Cisco technology, as well as setting up the partner transformation practice,” West added.
“All of these which were created in APJC, have been adopted for all our partners globally. All of us at Cisco wish her the very best in her future endeavours.”
Prior to Cisco, Batka held a variety of senior leadership positions across management, sales and marketing functions, following channel-facing roles at SAP, VMware, CA Technologies, Adobe, Toshiba and Network Associates.
For Batka, channel has represented the only route to market in the region and in recognition of such fierce advocacy and championing of the partner network, the industry figure was honoured with Channel Asia Hall of Fame recognition in 2021.
Beyond the channel, Batka also assumed an executive sponsor role for Women of Cisco across APJC, helping to 'Pay It Forward' by assisting and supporting female talent both internally and externally.
This is alongside regular speaking engagements specific to the topic of gender diversity and inclusion (D&I), notably at Women in ICT Awards, Women Rock IT, International Women's Day and International Girls in ICT Day among others.
