John McCool is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Services Group (DSSG). In this role he is responsible for driving the strategy, engineering and marketing direction of modular Cisco Catalyst 4000/6000 Series switching for campus, the new Nexus Data Center switching series, and Cisco's Optical product line. McCool is also charged with driving the expansion into application networking, virtualization, and integrated security services. The DSSG business accounts for about $10 billion in direct and $15 billion of indirect revenue.
McCool is a member of the Cisco Development Council, the senior leadership team who is collectively driving Cisco's engineering and development efforts. In addition, McCool has several other leadership roles in Cisco: he leads Cisco's Switching Business Council, is a member of Cisco's Enterprise Business Council, a co-chair of the Cisco's Enterprise Architecture Board and a co-chair of Cisco EcoBoard. As the co-chair of Cisco's Enterprise Architecture Board, McCool oversees the company's initiatives to drive system solutions for the campus, branch and data center.
McCool came to Cisco through the Granite acquisition, where he was instrumental in growing Cisco's Gigabit Ethernet technologies and Catalyst 4500 to multibillion dollar run rates. Over the years he expanded his responsibilities to lead the Internet Switching Business Unit responsible for the Catalyst 6500, Cisco's most successful and innovative LAN switching platform. Prior to his current role he led the Campus Switching Systems Technology Group which encompassed the both the Catalyst 4500 and 6500 series, as well as optical transceivers.
Prior to joining Cisco, McCool led network product development teams at SynOptics, NeXT Computer and Advanced Micro Devices. He has been active in creating industry standards, playing a key role in the development of dual speed 10/100BASE-T technology as part of the IEEE802.3u standard and making significant contributions to the ANSI X3T9.5 FDDI standard. McCool holds several patents related to network technologies. McCool is a graduate of Drexel University with a degree in Electrical Engineering and a master's degree in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University.
Owen Chan is President of Asia Pacific Operations at Cisco. Chan's responsibility is to develop and execute the company's go-to-market strategies in the service provider, enterprise, small-to-medium business, and consumer markets to drive growth, market leadership, profitability, and customer and partner satisfaction in 13 countries and geographic areas in the region.
Before being promoted to this role, Chan was Vice President, North Asia Operations from 2004 to 2005 and Vice President, Asia Operations from 2002 to 2004. During his tenure, Chan exceeded his revenue targets every year, led his regions to generate their highest sales revenue since the worldwide high-tech downturn of 2000, gained the highest-ever LAN market share for Cisco, and achieved the highest productivity growth rate in Cisco worldwide. Chan joined Cisco in 1999 as Vice President, responsible for Cisco's Business Solutions Consulting and Support Services in Asia Pacific and Japan.
Prior to joining Cisco, Chan spent over 12 years with General Electric, where his most recent position was Vice President of Information Services, Asia Pacific and Japan Operations. He successfully transformed GE's regional presence by introducing e-commerce service to the China market, establishing GE as the market leader for a six-year period, and opening China's market to other GE services. He also initiated and grew five major GE joint ventures (with partners including NEC and ISI-Dentsu).
Tom Mehrmann is the Chief Executive of Ocean Park Corporation, Hong Kong's sea-life and animal theme park, which hosts close to five million visitors annually.
Mr. Mehrmann started his career in the theme park industry in 1977 at Knott's Berry Farm in the United States as a park service attendant. From there, he spent the next 21 years working through the ranks, eventually becoming Vice President of Park Operations and Entertainment in 1996.
In 1998, he joined Six Flags Marine World as Vice President and General Manager, and later accepted an appointment as VP and GM of Warner Brothers Movie World in Madrid, when the park was taken over by Six Flags in 2000. He was responsible for the design, development and construction of the US$380 million Madrid Movie World, which opened in April 2002 with revenues of US$71 million a year.
Since joining Ocean Park in 2004, he has directed the activities of the park to achieve four successive years of record attendance, revenue and surpluses in the Park's history, while leading the effort of defining the Master Redevelopment Plan for the future Ocean Park. The MRP received government approval to proceed in December 2005, and a syndicated loan financing of H$5.55 billion was secured in 2006. The project broke ground in late 2006 and is slated for a 2012/13 completion.
Highlighting the growth and evolution of Ocean Park under Mr. Mehrmann's direction, Forbes.com in 2006 named the Park as one of the "10 most popular theme parks in the world". In 2007, Forbes Traveler also named Ocean Park as one of the "Top 50 Most Visited Tourist Attractions in the World".
Mr. Mehrmann also devotes efforts to the community and to promoting tourism development in Hong Kong by serving under the following organizations as:
Advisory Committee Member of the School of Hotel & Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Member of the Advisory Committee on Hotel & Tourism Management of the School of Hotel & Tourism Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Committee Member of the Travel/Tourism Committee of the Hong Kong Coalition of Service Industries, Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce
Member of the Hong Kong Employers' Federation of Hong Kong
Member of the American Chamber of Commerce
Advisory Committee Member of the Tourism Orientation Programme of the Hong Kong Tourism Board
Sector/Subject Specialist for the Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation
A graduate of the California State University, Fullerton, Mr. Mehrmann holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. He also completed the Advanced Courses organised by IAAPA* in Theme Park Management at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
* International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions
