Business-First IT in the AI Era with Cisco Sanchez of Qualcomm

CIO Classified

This episode features Cisco Sanchez, SVP and CIO at Qualcomm, who shares his business-first philosophy to technology cultivated over 25 years of IT experience. Sanchez emphasizes the importance of IT professionals loving both technology and the business, creating roadmaps that align with business goals, and utilizing frameworks like Charlie Feld's approach.

About Cisco:

Cisco Sanchez is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Qualcomm Incorporated. As the leader of Qualcomm’s global IT organization, Cisco is responsible for leading the strategic direction for IT infrastructure, Information Security & Risk Management, Cyber Resiliency, Enterprise Applications, and End User Productivity solutions. Cisco is also responsible for driving large scale Pre-Silicon, Post Silicon and Enterprise-wide digital transformation initiatives improving Qualcomm’s agility, leverage, efficiency and security. He collaborates with the executive and business unit leadership and focuses on enabling forward-looking innovative technology solutions to achieve Qualcomm’s vision and deliver strategic value.

Sanchez has more than 24 years of engineering and IT experience. Prior to Qualcomm, Sanchez spent over 15 years at FedEx Ground company. At FedEx Ground, Sanchez served as the SVP & CIO after having worked his way up the ranks, gaining expertise in architecture design, acquisition integration and enterprise IT systems. Throughout his career, Cisco has led many initiatives to ready FedEx for the next generation of business needs, processes, and data resources, including system upgrades, data center migrations, cyber security management and data analytics ecosystem development, to name a few. Cisco holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Colorado State University and a master’s degree in management information systems from Colorado Technical University.

Guest Quote:

"We love technology. I love technology. I'm a developer, but we should also love the business and understand it thoroughly. So when I first came in, my goal was to not make drastic changes, but understand the business to the best ability possible. I use a framework that looks at the models and try to understand, here's what the business does, here's how it does it, the technology underneath, here's how the enablement activity works. And I think by doing that, it gives you a different, deeper perspective of how the business is interacting and what they do.”

Timestamps:

• *(03:30) - The Role of AI in Modern IT
• *(09:10) - Frameworks for Business-First IT
• *(17:50) - Selling the Vision
• *(18:50) - AI Innovations at Qualcomm
• *(23:30) - The Convergence of IoT and AI

Links:

• Connect with Ian Faison and Cisco Sanchez on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Qualcomm
• Ready for more conversations about strategic leadership in AI, automation, and orchestration? Check out The New Automation Mindset Podcast by Workato.