Wendy Ng

Wendy Ng, an industrial engineer, drives the strategy and operating model to embed circular economy practices into product and packaging design across Cisco’s portfolio. She manages the network equipment company’s governance framework, oversees tools, builds training and leads an internal network to share best practices. 

These efforts increased internal compliance to 96 percent in 2024 from 27 percent in 2023 and enabled Cisco to meet its public goal of incorporating circular design principles into 100 percent of new products and packaging by 2025. Ng also managed the program to incorporate more recycled plastic into Cisco products, increasing usage to 45 percent in 2025. In 2026, she co-led the launch of Circular Design 2.0, collaborating with more than 60 cross-functional stakeholders to design the next generation of the program.

Ng transitioned to sustainability from Cisco’s reverse logistics team, where she launched a customer returns platform supporting Cisco’s takeback and reuse program and developed a dashboard to track takeback adoption.