From January 2007
Scott M. Blacklin
Vice President, Emerging Markets—Public Sector
Cisco
As Vice President, Emerging Markets – Public Sector, Scott Blacklin is responsible for driving sales of Cisco technology and services to over 130 countries. His responsibilities include developing political support for Internet-driven development in these countries, and also for directing development fund resources to these objectives.
Previously, Blacklin directed strategic engagements for Cisco’s Structured Finance Group beginning in 2002. The focus of this operation was to deliver liquidity to Cisco customers through Washington-based financing and funding sources such as the US EximBank, the World Bank, and USAID as well as equity firms.
Blacklin has devoted virtually all of his professional life to furthering commercial ties between the United States and emerging markets, with particular experience in Russia and Eastern Europe. He began his career with the U.S. Department of Energy, where he focused on energy technology issues and structured cooperative agreements with the USSR, Eastern Europe, and the Peoples Republic of China. He subsequently spent over ten years in Eastern Europe and Russia, leading the Moscow offices of several U.S. companies, including WJS Incorporated, Westinghouse Electric, and Motorola’s International Cellular Infrastructure Group, developing and managing for these companies a range of sales, marketing, export/import, and financing initiatives. In 1997 he became President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, representing the U.S. business community in the Russian Federation and building strong working relationships with Russian commercial and governmental entities.
In the United States, Blacklin served as Director of the International Division of the State of Maryland, working to increase Maryland exports and attract foreign investment. Representing Maryland overseas, Blacklin drove the creation of unique “Sister-State” relations with leading regions in Russia, China, Korea, Japan, Poland, Germany and Mexico. In the private sector, he was President of Potomac Group International in Washington, D.C., where he developed and executed clients’ commercial objectives in the former USSR, Yugoslavia, and Eastern Europe.
Blacklin received his undergraduate degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and completed postgraduate work in Sino-Soviet studies at The George Washington University. He also studied at Leningrad State University and speaks fluent Russian.
