Cisco global channel marketing boss to exit

Moves back to UK.

Amanda Jobbins, the hard-charging vice president of global partner marketing at Cisco, is leaving the company and returning to her native United Kingdom, CRN has learned.

A Cisco spokesperson confirmed to CRN Jobbins' departure, citing family reasons. Jobbins' internal team at Cisco was notified of her exit earlier on Friday, according to sources.

Jobbins' manager, Karen Walker, Cisco global vice president of segment, services and field marketing, will be assuming the partner marketing responsibilities until Jobbins' replacement is named, according to the Cisco spokesperson, and she and Jobbins will be working closely through September on the transition.

"As VP of Global Partner Marketing over the past year, Amanda has done a tremendous job building out the function within Global Marketing and Corporate Communication," read a statement from Cisco told CRN. "We thank Amanda for her many contributions during her tenure at Cisco."

Jobbins was in the role for just over a year, but had quickly established herself with partners as a no-nonsense, quick-witted member of Cisco's channel management team. She had committed to further expanding Cisco's partner marketing programs, which are some of the most extensive and well thought-of programs in the industry, to include more funding and a wider range of resources, particularly around social media.

In February, during Cisco's annual Partner Velocity event, Jobbins unveiled a series of new offers for partners -- including expanded joint marketing funds, assistance with social media and the ability to work with a marketing consultant on an integrated campaign -- and promised solution providers other tools such as virtual marketing consultants.

Jobbins was named to the job during the beginnings of Cisco's global restructuring last year. She succeeded another popular Cisco vice president of worldwide partner marketing, Luanne Tierney, who had jumped to Cisco rival Juniper in January 2011.

Jobbins spent about four years at Cisco, and before her current role, she was vice president of marketing for Cisco in Europe. She worked in European marketing roles at Symantec and McAfee, among other places, before joining Cisco in 2008.

Cisco partners are seeing a channel management team much changed in the last two years. In addition to the marketing exits, Cisco also recently confirmed the retirement of Keith Goodwin, senior vice president, Worldwide Partner Organisation (WWPO), who's passing the torch to Bruce Klein, most recently Cisco's senior vice president, U.S. public sector theater.

In addition, Wendy Bahr has returned from her role running Cisco's top global partnerships to be Cisco Americas partner organisation senior vice president, following the move by Jim Sherriff, who'd had the role since 2010, to a new role running the sales function for Cisco's company-wide Accelerated Cisco Transformation (ACT) project.

This article originally appeared at crn.com