Speaker Spotlight: Shannon Rossi Brings More Than a Decade of AI Innovation to the Acordis 2026 Tech Summit

As artificial intelligence transforms how organizations operate, compete, and secure their environments, the infrastructure behind AI has become just as critical as the technology itself.

At the Acordis 2026 Tech Summit: The Next Frontier – Security in the Age of AI, we’re excited to welcome Shannon Rossi, Head of AI Strategy and Sales for Cisco’s East Enterprise customers, as one of this year’s featured speakers.

With more than a decade of experience at the forefront of artificial intelligence and data innovation, Shannon has built her career helping organizations adopt emerging technologies long before AI became a mainstream enterprise priority.

From Early Machine Learning to Today’s AI Revolution

Shannon’s AI journey began in 2014 at Shoefitr, Inc., which was later acquired by Amazon. There, she worked at the intersection of machine learning and robotics, helping commercialize early AI-powered solutions that would contribute to reshaping the e-commerce landscape.

She continued that trajectory at First Insight, Inc. and Numerator, deepening her expertise in predictive analytics and data-driven decision-making across large enterprise environments.

At ThoughtSpot, Shannon championed natural language processing and self-service analytics, helping empower business users to interact with data in new ways. These technologies helped lay the groundwork for many of the generative AI experiences businesses are embracing today.

Most recently, Shannon served as VP of Strategic Accounts and Partnerships at Elemental Cognition, recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Company. Her work focused on neurosymbolic AI, combining the capabilities of generative AI with the structured reasoning and explainability of symbolic AI to address the trust, accuracy, and auditability requirements of complex enterprise environments.

Throughout her career, Shannon has played an instrumental role in multiple acquisitions and has worked closely with leadership teams at large enterprises to guide the adoption of emerging technologies, transform workflows, and create lasting organizational change. She has also partnered extensively with major cloud providers to develop stronger product offerings for shared customers.

Building the Infrastructure for the AI Era

Today at Cisco, Shannon is focused on helping organizations harness the potential of secure, scalable AI.

AI adoption requires much more than choosing the right model or application. Organizations must consider the networks connecting increasingly demanding workloads, the security protecting their environments, the observability needed to understand performance, and the compute infrastructure capable of supporting AI at scale.

Shannon draws on Cisco’s portfolio spanning networking, security, observability, and AI-ready compute to help organizations build the resilient infrastructure, sovereign data capabilities, and computing intelligence required for increasingly complex AI environments.

As part of this work, Shannon partners closely with NVIDIA, AMD, and other technology leaders, combining Cisco’s networking and security capabilities with accelerated computing platforms to help deliver complete, end-to-end AI solutions for enterprise customers.

Join Shannon Rossi at the Acordis 2026 Tech Summit

Shannon will join technology executives, cybersecurity leaders, innovators, and industry experts at the Acordis 2026 Tech Summit for a day dedicated to exploring what comes next for enterprise technology.

This year’s theme, “The Next Frontier – Security in the Age of AI,” will examine how artificial intelligence is transforming cybersecurity, networking, infrastructure, and the way organizations prepare for the future.

Event Details

Acordis 2026 Tech Summit: The Next Frontier – Security in the Age of AI

Thursday, October 1, 202611:00 AM – 5:00 PM601 Miami | Miami, Florida

We look forward to welcoming Shannon Rossi and hearing her perspective on how organizations can build the secure, resilient, and scalable infrastructure necessary to succeed in the next era of AI.