SAN JOSE, CA: Tech company Cisco has named Oliver Roll as SVP and chief comms officer.
Roll oversees PR, analyst relations, along with executive, employee, and CEO comms. His official start date was Monday, according to a Cisco spokesperson.
Roll reports to CMO Karen Walker and oversees a team of more than 60 staffers. This is a new leadership role at the SVP level. Former comms head Melissa Selcher, who is now VP of corporate comms at LinkedIn, served as VP and CCO when she worked at Cisco.
Walker said in a blog post on Monday morning that technology is changing everything; solving some of the world’s greatest challenges; and transforming Cisco customers’ businesses in new and unprecedented ways.
"Our job is to help our customers navigate this complexity — so there’s never been a better time to tell the Cisco story clearly and concisely," she wrote.
Roll was most recently CCO at VMWare, a Palo Alto-based company that specializes in infrastructure technology and hybrid cloud services. There, he headed up brand work and comms.
Prior to that, for two decades, Roll held a variety of senior comms and marketing roles in different global regions at Microsoft, according to his LinkedIn account.
Selcher joined LinkedIn a couple months ahead of Microsoft’s announcement that it would acquire the social media company. The $26 billion deal officially closed last week, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Her departure was preceded by David McCulloch’s exit to lead global comms for GE Power Digital the month prior.
