Skip to Content | Skip to Footer
Richard Justice Biography
Rick Justice is executive vice president of Worldwide Operations and Business Development for Cisco. He is also a member of the Cisco Operating Committee, which develops and directs the company’s overall business strategy, and has responsibility for reporting the company’s operational results to Cisco’s Board of Directors.
Justice oversees the company’s worldwide Sales organization, a team of more than 15,000 sales, systems engineering and operations employees. In addition, he is responsible for Business Development, which includes the company’s acquisitions strategy and investment portfolio, and Cisco’s Strategic Alliances program. The Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), a strategic consulting arm of Cisco, also falls under Justice’s purview.
As an executive officer, he plays an important role in a wide variety of Cisco’s strategic and operating initiatives. He helped navigate the company through the dramatic boom, bust and build-out cycles of the high tech industry. With an emphasis on operational excellence, he was instrumental in helping Cisco rapidly restore its healthy profitability after the high tech bust. Then, with the build-out, his team reignited product sales to a compound annual growth rate in excess of 15% for the ensuing five years.
Justice has also been a key proponent in evolving Cisco’s strategy to capture opportunities in the emerging markets of India, China, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. By investing heavily in these geographies, he helped Cisco double its business in emerging markets over a three-year period.
He joined Cisco in December 1996 as leader of Cisco Americas Field Operations. He was soon named the worldwide leader of Field Operations, and then progressively took on increasing responsibilities. He was named Executive Vice President in 2007.
Before joining Cisco, Justice spent 22 years with Hewlett-Packard. His HP career included sales and marketing leadership roles, including a three-year assignment in Hong Kong leading HP’s Asia Pacific operations and his last role as worldwide leader of enterprise sales.
Justice has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Santa Clara University and a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) from Stanford University. He is a member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council and the Santa Clara University Board of Regents.