Technical Sales and Marketing

Joseph D. McGhee
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Cisco Systems Korea, Inc.

By Garland L. Thompson

Joseph D. McGhee, who joined Cisco Systems two years ago, is following a classic route to success of American executives: Bringing home the bacon from foreign postings.

His first job was that of operations director, Capitol Operations, responsible for driving sales and service revenue for the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area. Next, he moved to Cisco's Korean operation, responsible for managing sales, service, marketing, finance, human resources, and administration of a 300-person team, in a market that generates nearly $1 billion in annual revenue. 

That success did not come out of the blue. He had succeeded in European postings at Siemens Telecommunications Network and had risen to vice president and general manager of Siemens' Network Management Solutions Business Unit in Boca Raton, Fla. Before that, he had spent two years working in Asian-Pacific markets as business development manager for AT&T Paradyne's Advanced Transmission Technologies Group. He had managed all sales and marketing efforts in the Far East and developed new licensing relationships with potential business partners for the group's Digital Subscriber Line high-bandwidth solutions. 

McGhee, a 1985 honors graduate of Jackson State University in management and marketing, was the first JSU alumni to go to Harvard Business School, completing his M.B.A., in 1991. He also had completed the University of Michigan Executive Education Center's program in "Negotiating with the Japanese" and taken numerous courses through the AT&T Executive Development Program.

In his 15-year career, he has worked as a customer service representative for IBM in New York; a department manager and buyer for Parisian, Inc. clothing stores; a marketing representative for Xerox Corp.; a regional account representative for Lotus Development Corp.'s North American Sales Division; and various marketing jobs for AT&T.

Garland L. Thompson is assistant managing editor of The Philadelphia Tribune and a member of the Black Engineer of the Year Awards Selection Panel. He can be reached at GThompson@ccgmag.com.