Willa Black

Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Cisco Canada

As Vice-President, Corporate Affairs for Cisco Canada, Willa Black is responsible for strategies to drive Cisco's brand relevance and transformational impact.   She leads CSR programming with a focus on

Education and Healthcare, building strategic partnerships and reinforcing the company's commitment to social innovation working with governments, non-governmental organizations, and communities across Canada.

Named one of Canada's Top 25 Women of Influence for 2011, one of the Canadian Board Diversity Council's 2015 Diversity 50, the Federated Press Canadian Woman Leader of the Year for 2015, and the recipient of the 2015 Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business Award for Excellence in Aboriginal Relations, Black has held Marketing and CSR leadership roles at Cisco Canada since 1999. In 2014, she led the development and launch of Connected North, a ground-breaking program which brings  21st Century "virtual" learning via Cisco TelePresence Technology to Indigenous schools across Canada, and connects students and classrooms in remote Indigenous communities with students in Canada's south. Connected North is now scaling across Nunavut, the NWT, the Yukon, Saskatchewan and Ontario.

Black sits on the boards of the Canadian Club, the Toronto Civic Action Steering Committee, the Board of Trustees for the Gordon Foundation, and was a Founding Member of the Children's Book Bank in Regent Park. She has also participated in many IT industry initiatives  and is a frequent speaker at industry and association events.

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