Deborah Woollard is the Global Vice President of Leadership & Team Development at Cisco.

In her current role, Deborah is responsible for leading Cisco’s global leadership & team development strategy to support the vision of powering and inclusive future for all. Leading a team of diverse global experts from across leadership, learning, teams & executive coaching to develop and continuously evolve Cisco’s leadership & team philosophy, development offerings and roadmap of deliverables in response to the evolving needs of employees, future of work priorities and the cultural transformation agenda.

Prior to this role Deborah was the Vice President for People & Communities for Cisco’s Asia Pacific region. She was responsible for partnering with business leaders to help shape the Asia Pacific business strategy, and create and align P&C solutions to enable performance and accelerate Cisco’s growth. Deborah also led the Communities team across the region focusing on ensuring teams are equipped to build the best talent and workplace culture, providing services to over 20,000 people in 16 countries across the region.

Before joining Cisco Deborah spent four years working with InterContinental Hotels Group as the Vice President of HR across the Asia, Middle East and Africa regions, leading an HR team in the delivery of people servicesto over 55,000 employees in 48 countries and spearheading global projects to reshape
early careers, luxury capability and the global learning & development platform.

Prior to the world of hospitality, Deborah worked with Abbott Laboratories within the Pharmaceuticals division leading the HR function across Global Emerging Markets extending from Russia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia, working on large scale acquisitions and integration, aggressive market expansion and talent acceleration.

Deborah started her career with Unilever as a graduate trainee in Sales & Marketing before transitioning to HR. She has worked in a number of specialist areas of HR including Talent Development, Learning, Talent Acquisition, Transformation and Organizational Effectiveness, as well as serving in large generalist roles in both developed and emerging markets and has lived and worked in Australia, Japan, the UK and now Singapore.

Deborah has Master degrees in Human Resource Management and Leadership Psychology and Bachelor degrees in Commerce (Business Administration) and Arts (Organizational Psychology). Deborah is a certified executive coach and Lifeline crisis counsellor and is particularly passionate about talent and leadership development and organizational transformation.