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True pioneers don’t just follow industry trends, they set them. Mary de Wysocki, Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Officer, is one. Recognized for her commitment to driving positive impact and unlocking business value, Mary has played an instrumental role in driving Cisco’s strategy forward. Under her leadership, Cisco has delivered for its customers — embedding sustainability into the core of its operations and supply chain to help boost product energy efficiency, lower costs, and create long-term value.
A Turning Point: Entering the Sustainability Arena
Mary’s drive to create meaningful, community-centered change has shaped her career from the start. She joined Cisco more than 25 years ago, but one transformative moment stands out: her time in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Over two years, she and her team supported Cisco’s recovery efforts, helping to restore connectivity and deploying critical technology in schools across Louisiana and Mississippi. It was a life-changing experience that clarified her purpose and deepened her commitment to impact.
A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Driving Change
Her path hasn’t been linear, and that’s part of her strength. With a background in law, consulting, and program management, she brings a unique and holistic perspective to corporate sustainability. Her legal training sharpens her understanding of the complex and consistently evolving regulatory environment whereas her time in consulting has prepared her to lead with a solution-oriented mindset and collaborate across a wide variety of teams. And leveraging her program management experience, Mary effectively drives alignment, execution, and accountability.
This blend of disciplines allows Mary to bridge strategy with operations — connecting ambitious goals to practical implementation across the business. In today’s landscape, where responding to customer needs requires a complete understanding and view of risk, innovation, and compliance, she emphasizes the importance of cross-functional, clear-eyed analysis, and data-driven decision-making. “Strategy and data,” she notes, “are essential to shaping initiatives that are both visionary and achievable — and that stay responsive to evolving stakeholder expectations.”
Mary’s Commitment to Progress
From the start, Mary recognized connectivity as both a business necessity and a lifeline. As she worked with schools, small businesses, and local governments, she saw firsthand the growing gap between communities with access to reliable technology and those without. This experience deepened Mary’s commitment to bridge the digital divide and using Cisco’s world-class technology to serve as a catalyst for opportunity.
As Cisco’s first Chief Sustainability Officer, Mary views her role as one of stewardship. It’s a position that demands deep subject-matter expertise and a wide-angle view of the organization’s priorities — all in service of accelerating impact at scale.
“I’m deeply aware there’s no established playbook or historical roadmap for this role. That makes it both a challenge and a privilege. The question becomes: how do we shape a path where none exists — one that maximizes our collective impact, supports our customers’ energy and efficiency goals, and creates long-term value for the business and society?” she explains. “It’s a dynamic space, and what inspires me most is the opportunity to work across teams to create something lasting and future-focused, together.”
Balancing Long-term Goals with Immediate Priorities
At Cisco, purpose is a guiding principle: to power an inclusive future for all. That means securely connecting the world and empowering customers, partners, and communities to unlock innovation. Every step the company takes today — from improving energy efficiency to enhancing digital resilience — is designed to deliver value now while laying the groundwork for a more sustainable future. Cisco’s short-term priorities and long-term goals create a natural synergy that’s reflected in her team’s work.
Remarkable Leadership Principles to Drive Results
Mary believes driving sustainability on a global scale requires both strategic clarity and a pragmatic, yet optimistic outlook. She emphasizes that leaders also need to adopt a forward-looking mindset.
“Progress begins with understanding the priorities, constraints, and opportunities of internal teams, customers, and partners,” she explains.
In an ever-evolving technological landscape, she prioritizes clarity over certainty, recognizing what matters most is creating alignment, providing a clear direction, and enabling people to move forward with confidence and purpose.
Collaboration as a Cornerstone
Transformative change doesn’t happen in silos; it’s built through collaboration — across departments, disciplines, and stakeholders. That’s why Mary ensures big-picture goals are matched with realistic expectations and clear communication. From the top down, this approach creates an environment where consistency, accountability, and transparency are non-negotiable. Whether it’s developing innovative solutions or refining practical ideas, Mary and her team work hand-in-hand, across the organization, to foster cohesion and unlock value.
Integrating Sustainability into Core Operations
Recognizing the potential for greater efficiency and lower costs is crucial, Mary says: “If you can optimize supply chains, minimize energy consumption, and reduce waste, you can drive long-term financial savings while creating durable and more energy-efficient business operations.”
That philosophy has translated into tangible action and results at Cisco: investing in clean energy, advancing circular design principles, and developing technology with energy efficiency in mind.
Mary also champions the power of smart infrastructure and capability of IoT in transforming how businesses collect real-time data to make more informed decisions.
“I used to think about IoT as a tool to bring intelligence to the edge, expanding the network and connections,” she reflects. But a recent collaboration between Cisco, a Tanzanian coffee grower, and researchers in Italy shifted her perspective. By using IoT devices to monitor soil and plant health, the project enabled more precise irrigation and resource optimization — a powerful example of how this application of technology can also drive better outcomes.
Navigating Technological Challenges on the Path to Sustainability
One of the biggest hurdles in achieving sustainability, Mary believes, is designing products, processes, or infrastructure with sustainability at the forefront — not as an afterthought. However, in reality, most organizations must innovate within existing frameworks. That’s where collaboration becomes essential — finding creative ways to adapt both the technology itself and the broader ecosystem around it, from packaging and shipping to cooling systems and end-of-life processes.
At the heart of this approach is circularity. Rather than relying on a linear model of use and disposal, circular thinking encourages teams to prioritize reuse, remanufacturing, and recovery right from the design phase. This strategy can reduce waste, lower use of virgin materials, and extend the useful life of products.
Translating the goals, of say a Chief Sustainability Officer, into technology decisions made by a Chief Technology Officer, adds another layer of complexity. Bridging the divide between pure technology decisions – like the need for speed, scale, security, and performance – and how you can create value through efforts like energy, material and waste reduction, is critical.
Tackling Emerging Trends in Energy and Innovation
One of today’s most pressing sustainability trends is the global rise in energy consumption — driven by population growth, economic development, and emerging technologies, especially AI. At Cisco, the response is a strategic one.
“We’re designing high-performance architectures that improve energy efficiency and integrate smart technologies to reduce energy consumption for the company and its customers,” explains Mary. Whether it’s AI, IoT, Power over Ethernet, or other next-gen solutions, Mary sees digital innovation as a core enabler of a more sustainable future. “Digital solutions are key,” she notes. “But so is verifiable data. That’s what allows businesses like Cisco to make smarter decisions and provide transparency to customers, partners, and suppliers.”
A Long-term Vision
One of the most energizing aspects of Mary’s role is her continuous focus on achieving a balance between tangible progress and future-focused plans. While Cisco focuses on today’s urgent needs — from expanding connectivity and securing the AI era to closing the digital divide — the team is also looking five to ten years ahead. Their vision? A future where energy efficient technologies and clean energy are deployed at scale to support communities and support digital resilience. For Mary, this intersection of business performance and community resiliency is where the most meaningful change happens.
Mary’s Approach: Expanding on Innovation and Unlocking AI’s Potential
As AI continues to redefine industries, governments, and communities, Mary sees potential and a need for forethought. While AI’s energy demands are rising, the technology also presents an opportunity to drive efficiency, lower costs for customers, and drive business results.
This is where Cisco’s innovation plays a role. Its Silicon One chip, for example, can support large-scale AI and machine learning workloads while increasing efficiency, simplifying hardware, and extending the lifecycle of networking equipment.
Looking ahead, Mary believes we’ll see AI become increasingly efficient — not just in how it runs, but in what it enables. From optimizing power grids and enhancing clean energy production to improving battery storage and minimizing waste, AI has the potential to transform the energy landscape. But she’s clear-eyed about the challenges, too.
“AI is a powerful tool, and it’s about finding the right approach,” she explains. “Using AI to spark innovation and efficiency while also guiding smarter infrastructure planning and enabling low-carbon solutions will be important as we move forward.”
As she sees it, the future of energy will be shaped by intelligent, secure, and clean technologies — and with the thoughtful deployment of AI, the possibilities are greater than ever.
