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Corporate Counsel, Responsible Value Chain—Business and Human Rights

at Cisco Systems Inc.

Job Description

What You’ll Do

You will join the Cisco Legal team as Corporate Counsel supporting Cisco’s Business & Human Rights (BHR) team in its efforts to promote human rights in our business relationships. BHR works to advance and operationalize Cisco’s longstanding commitments to business and human rights, enshrined in our Global Human Rights Policy.

In this role, you’ll play a critical role in shaping and operationalizing policies to advance implementation and adoption of Cisco human rights policies and international human rights norms throughout Cisco’s global operations. You’ll develop and refine our policies, processes, and operational guidance to support business decisions consistent with these norms. And you’ll engage proactively with internal and external stakeholders to identify, prevent, mitigate, and address risks to human rights associated with Cisco’s business relationships.

Your work will focus primarily on working cross-functionally to support Cisco’s work promoting human rights throughout our value chain. You’ll lead efforts to develop policies, processes, and operational guidance to identify, prevent, mitigate, and address human rights risks in business transactions, and you’ll support our Supply Chain human rights team in matters related to human rights due diligence, remediation, public reporting, and regulatory compliance. You’ll work closely with cross-functional teams around the globe, including supply chain, privacy, security, government affairs, and legal, among others.

You should be passionate about human rights, a great listener, solutions-driven, and a skilled advisor. You should have a strong background as a human rights lawyer and be able to translate these concepts into actionable feedback for our partners within Cisco, third party business partners, and other external stakeholders.

Your Responsibilities

This role supports the overall mission of the Business and Human Rights group, charged with integrating human rights commitments into Cisco’s day-to-day operations through development of policies, processes, and operational guidance. You’ll support teams across Cisco’s global operations as they seek to engage in responsible decision-making consistent with Cisco’s values, commitments, and responsibility to respect human rights and to manage human rights risks linked to our business relationships.

Daily work includes:

  • Working closely with cross-functional legal, product, sales, and business teams to develop frameworks for identifying, preventing, mitigating, and addressing human rights risk associated with business transactions.Identifying and advancing opportunities for promoting respect for human rights throughout our partner ecosystem.
  • Supporting Cisco’s Supply Chain human rights team in matters related to human rights due diligence and remediation, as on efforts around transparency of human rights issues related to the supply chain.
  • Conducting country-level human rights due diligence and provide practical guidance to cross-functional stakeholder to mitigate, prevent, and remediate risks.
  • Monitoring legislative developments pertaining to mandatory human rights due diligence throughout the value chain, working with our Government Affairs team to advance positions in the interest of Cisco and consistent with our Global Human Rights Policy, and working with cross-functional teams to implement policy and/or process changes to comply with emerging laws.
  • Proactively identifying emerging trends in technology, ethics, and human rights and their applicability to Cisco’s global business; drafting briefings for internal stakeholders.
  • Developing relationships with cross-functional stakeholders throughout the business to integrate human rights considerations into responsible decision-making frameworks.
  • Engaging with external stakeholders learn and share Cisco’s approach to business and human rights, and to inform our strategy and risk analysis going forward.
  • Other activities in support of the business and human rights strategy, as assigned.

Qualifications:

  • 2-5 years of relevant legal, in-house, or business and human rights experience
  • Ability to understand and translate complex global human rights standards into concise, actionable advice for key stakeholders and decision-makers
  • Excellent writing and communication skills
  • Sound judgment and the ability to craft creative, pragmatic solutions to drive impact and results
  • Strong organizational and project management skills; ability to prioritize and manage several simultaneous projects under deadline pressure; ability to self-start and lead projects
  • Affinity for working collaboratively, positively, and strategically with global and cross-functional teams
  • Intellectual curiosity and interest in learning about new technologies and product offerings
  • Resilient, affable, and light-hearted
  • JD with strong academic record
  • State bar in good standing

To Apply:

Please visit the Cisco careers website.