Chief executive officer and co-founder of SalesForce.com Marc Benioff has been appointed to the Cisco board of directors.
The announcement was made by Cisco’s chairman and CEO, John Chambers. Chambers further announced that Benioff will be joined by Dr. Kristina M. Johnson, CEO of Enduring Hydro, LLC and former Under Secretary of Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, to the board of directors.
Both appointments are effective August 1, 2012.
Benioff co-founded salesforce.com in 1999 and has served as chairman of the board since its inception. He has served as CEO of salesforce.com. Prior to launching salesforce.com, Benioff, a 30-year veteran of the software industry, spent 13 years at Oracle.
Johnson is currently the CEO of Enduring Hydro, LLC, a clean energy development and consulting company.
Previously, under secretary of energy, she managed a broad $10.5 billion energy and environment portfolio. Prior to this role, Johnson served as provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at The Johns Hopkins University and dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University.
She currently serves on the board of directors of Boston scientific Corporation and The AES Corporation. Johnson is also an inventor and entrepreneur, holding more than 45 U.S. patents. Johnson has received the John Fritz Medal, widely considered the highest award given in the engineering profession.
On the appointments, Chambers said the company is extremely pleased to welcome Marc and Kristina to Cisco’s board.
“Marc has changed the face of technology through his bold ideas around cloud computing and the social enterprise. Kristina brings us an unmatched expertise in science and technology, which will help guide Cisco as we continue to innovate and transform our customers’ experiences,” he said.
