partner & Head of Growth
John J. Chambers
John J. Chambers, Head of Growth, is the company's resident growth and strategic marketing advisor, helping organizations scale across various platforms. He also evaluates new technologies and opportunities while managing internal operations. Prior to joining JC2 Ventures, John led digital marketing teams at Houzz, Netflix, and Walmart eCommerce.
partner & CHIEF technical OFFICER
Yvette Kanouff
Yvette Kanouff is a Partner of JC2 Ventures. She is responsible for technology strategy and engineering relationships within JC2 Ventures investment companies, partners, and customers.
Yvette headed the $7B service provider business at Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in IT, networking, and cybersecurity solutions where she led the innovation and business transformation in service provider products including routing, access networks, optical networking, cable networks, network function virtualization and video/media. She has held CTO and President roles at various companies and has focused on leading the industry towards SaaS, cloud-centric, open, and automated solutions. Yvette pioneered technologies instrumental in creating video streaming, MPEG standards, encoding standards, content distribution networks, and the DVD.
Yvette has received numerous industry awards including the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Emmy for Engineering and Technology, the National Cable and Television Association's Vanguard Award for Leadership in Science and Technology, being named an Industry Pioneer, an Emmy for her work in Video on Demand with SeaChange, being named an Industry Wonder Woman, Top Techie, and Woman in Technology; she has been named one of the 11 most influential women in the Television industry, and has consistently been ranked as one of the top 100 industry executives.
Yvette began her career in digital signal processing and has a bachelor's and master's degree in Mathematics. Yvette holds several patents, is on various company and industry boards, and she is an active participant in industry organizations, standards bodies, and leading industry technology efforts including 5G, digitization, cloud, cybersecurity, media, and artificial intelligence.
partner & CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER
Pankaj Patel
Pankaj Patel is a Partner of JC2 Ventures. Patel is a proven results-oriented and seasoned technology leader with 25+ years of experience developing highly scalable products and services by building and leading large, high-performance global engineering organizations, setting a clear vision, directing a strategy and delivering against goals. As passionate as he is about translating strategy to execution, he is equally, if not more, passionate about delivering the best experience for the customer. He has consistently achieved that by delivering innovative solutions that matter to the customer, fueled by simplicity, speed and agility.
Previously, Patel had a stellar career at Cisco Systems as the Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer, running and growing multi-billion-dollar products and businesses across service provider and enterprise market segments. He reported to the CEO as the engineering head of the company’s $38 billion product and solution portfolio and drove the business and technology strategy across Cisco’s Routing, Switching, Wireless, Security, Mobility, Video, Collaboration, Data Center and Cloud offerings, delivered by a global team of more than 28,000 engineers. Patel was also responsible for defining the priorities and investment allocation of $6 billion in R&D spend annually.
Moreover, during his tenure at Cisco, Patel launched the biggest transformation of engineering, unparalleled in the company’s 30-year history, driving a culture of innovation (and the best place to work), agility (changing the engineers’ experience), portfolio (what we build to grow in current and new markets), new recurring business models and internal startups.
Patel retired from Cisco at the end of October 2016, and now serves on the Board of Directors of several startups. He is focused on incubating and advising startups with their strategy, go-to-market, growth and scale.
Patel is a leader who prides himself in helping his teams achieve success. In addition to enabling the careers and business success of many executives (past and present), he is a mentor and sponsor to numerous employees throughout the company and the industry.
partner & CHIEF OF STAFF
Shannon Pina
Shannon Pina is responsible for creating, driving and managing strategic communications for the organization. She also manages the day-to-day operations and is a liaison to the various companies under the JC2 Ventures portfolio. Prior to joining JC2 Ventures, Pina was John Chambers’ executive communications manager for over a decade at Cisco.
Chief Impact Officer & European Strategic Advisor
Hélène Sancerres
Hélène Sancerres is JC2 Ventures’ Chief Impact Officer and European Strategic Advisor. Hélène manages John Chambers’ activities in France, including his engagement as the Global French Tech Ambassador for President Macron. She also helps advise JC2 Ventures portfolio companies and their CEOs on their European ambitions.
Prior to JC2 Ventures, Hélène spent 25 years at Cisco, most recently serving as the Director of Change Management, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and Coaching for Cisco France. She previously held the position of Director of Communications and Business Development. In these roles at Cisco, Hélène led major investments with the French government, which resulted in digital technology training for 300,000 students, major cybersecurity partnerships, ‘smart cities’ pilots in Paris and Nice, among other activities.
Passionate about how digital technologies can accelerate transitions and growth, Hélène has shown her commitment to leading true and powerful cultural transformation, all of which have an effect on environmental, social, and governance matters.
Based in Paris, Hélène is a certified executive coach and sits on the boards of International NGO’s and Foundations; she is also a lecturer at Paris Assas University.