Karen Walker

Karen M. Walker is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Intel Corporation. She is responsible for building and strengthening Intel’s brand, supporting growth strategies, cultivating opportunities in new and existing markets, and increasing demand for Intel’s products and solutions globally. Walker has over 20 years of experience scaling for growth and global expansion. Prior to joining Intel in 2019, she served as chief marketing officer (CMO) of Cisco where she led a complete transformation of the marketing function to become a leader in real-time marketing and communications. She also served as a key leader in Cisco’s transformation to a hybrid business model selling hardware, services, SaaS, and software.

As CMO, she invested in the newest marketing technologies to build a multi-award-winning tech stack, creating a world-class digital marketing infrastructure. Through her leadership she transformed the marketing function from a cost-center to a revenue generating engine. Walker also led as Cisco’s brand value increased 16% in just three years to $34.6B dollars, ranking #15 on Interbrand’s Best Global Brands list.

Walker’s 20-plus years in the IT industry have included senior field and marketing leadership roles in Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific region. Walker excelled in her various roles at Cisco prior to CMO, starting as global vice president of Services Marketing, growing to take on Segments and Partners, and then finally becoming senior vice president of Go-to-Market. She joined Cisco from Hewlett-Packard, where she held both business and consumer leadership positions.

She is widely recognized as an industry authority on both technology and marketing topics. In 2017 and 2019, she was named one of the Top 10 Most Influential CMOs in the World by Forbes. She also serves as a board member of Eli Lilly, Sprout Social, and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Walker holds a bachelor’s degree with joint honors in chemistry and business studies from Loughborough University in England and was awarded an honorary doctorate of business administration from the University of Sunderland in 2018.