Ned Hooper

Founding Partner and Managing Partner Centerview Capital Technology

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Ned Hooper spent a decade as the person who decided what Cisco should buy. As Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and later Chief Strategy Officer, he led more than seventy-five acquisitions and ran the company’s venture and growth capital investing during the period when Cisco’s revenue went from $18 billion to more than $46 billion — an era in which acquisition was not a supplement to Cisco’s strategy but substantially was the strategy. He now applies the same lens from the other side, as Founding Partner and Managing Partner of Centerview Capital Technology, a growth equity firm backing companies in networking, collaboration, enterprise software and service provider platforms. What distinguishes his approach is the acquirer’s instinct: he invests in businesses that measurably raise productivity or competitiveness for enterprise and service provider customers, which is to say businesses that the large incumbents will eventually need.

Career Highlights

• Founding Partner and Managing Partner of Centerview Capital Technology.
• Led investments in Affirmed Networks, Quantenna Communications and Planful, formerly Host Analytics.
• Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of Cisco, appointed 8 July 2009, adding the role to his responsibilities as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Consumer; a member of Cisco’s Operating Committee.
• Led more than seventy-five acquisitions at Cisco and managed its venture and growth capital investments, over a ten-year period in which company revenue grew from $18 billion to more than $46 billion.
• President, Chief Operating Officer and board member of Infoworks.io until its acquisition by Uniphore, announced 5 December 2024.
• Board or board observer seats at Quantenna Communications, Host Analytics (now Planful), Acquia and zSpace.
• Board of Trustees member of the Darden School Foundation at the University of Virginia, where he hosts the school’s annual Tech Trek dinners.

Professional Journey

Hooper began in telecommunications as a product manager at MCI, took an MBA at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business in 1994, and joined Lightspeed International, a startup where he built and implemented a global distribution strategy. Cisco acquired Lightspeed, and that is how he arrived at the company whose corporate development machine he would eventually run.

At Cisco he rose through business development to become Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Consumer, responsible for acquisitions, equity investments and the incubation of new technologies. In July 2009 Cisco added the Chief Strategy Officer title, making him responsible for tying strategy to operations in partnership with the chief operating officer and for embedding a strategy discipline across the company. He sat on Cisco’s Operating Committee. Over his decade there he led more than seventy-five acquisitions — a volume that few corporate development leaders anywhere have matched — during a period in which Cisco’s revenue rose from $18 billion to more than $46 billion.

He left to co-found Centerview Capital Technology, the technology arm of Centerview Capital, where he is Founding Partner and now Managing Partner. His investments have included Affirmed Networks, the virtualised mobile core networking company later acquired by Microsoft; Quantenna Communications, the Wi-Fi silicon company; and Host Analytics, the financial planning software business since renamed Planful. He has taken board seats at several of these, and a board observer role at Acquia.

He has also worked as an operator within a portfolio company, serving as President, Chief Operating Officer and a board member of Infoworks.io, the data operations platform. That chapter closed in December 2024 when Uniphore announced its acquisition of Infoworks alongside ActionIQ. Outside investing, his most sustained commitment is to Darden, where he sits on the School Foundation’s Board of Trustees and has been central to building the school’s West Coast network, hosting its annual Tech Trek dinners for students visiting Silicon Valley.

Education

Darden School of Business, University of Virginia

MBA, Business Administration, 1994

University of Colorado

BA