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Let's make something wonderful.

I work where product management and product marketing meet: helping decide what to build, then helping people understand why it matters. I stay close to engineering and design from the first idea through launch.

View selected work

About

Build it well. Explain it clearly.

I like getting into the details with engineering, hearing where customers get stuck, and helping a team make the right tradeoffs. Then I like finding the few simple words that explain why the work matters.

I currently lead a team of senior product managers. Together, we own the wireless experience across Cisco's dashboards and APIs—from the feature roadmap to the way each feature works when it reaches a customer.

University of Southern CaliforniaMarshall School of BusinessMaster of Business AdministrationSpecialization in Marketing and Technology
University of California, IrvinePaul Merage School of BusinessBachelor of Arts in Business AdministrationBachelor of Arts in Business Economics

Selected work

A few things I've helped build.

Benson Lao presenting Cisco AgenticOps onstage

Idea to launch in 5 months

Cisco's first AgenticOps experience went from idea to launch in five months. I led the work across six engineering and three design teams, then tested it with 50 of Cisco's top customers. At launch, it could handle more than 90% of the troubleshooting cases we set out to solve. I also helped tell that story onstage to 21,000 people.

Cisco Meraki Wi-Fi 7 access point

$400M+ launch · 14+ teams

Wi-Fi 7 was a $400M+ launch that touched hardware, software, licensing, and support. I worked with engineering and design to make that whole journey feel like one product. The work became part of a three-year platform plan shared across more than 14 teams.

Cisco Meraki team collaborating in an office

Premium adoption: under 2% → 10% · Revenue per account doubled

Customers weren't seeing enough reason to choose Meraki's premium offer. We changed the product story, the value case, and the tools used by sales. Adoption grew from under 2% to 10%, and revenue per account doubled.

Benson Lao presenting Cisco AgenticOps onstage
Benson Lao speaking at a Cisco podium
Benson Lao demonstrating the AgenticOps experience onstage
A packed Cisco Live audience watching the main stage
The production team operating the Cisco Live presentation backstage
Benson Lao with a collaborator backstage at Cisco Live

Idea to launch in 5 months

When the network finds the problem first.

Network teams usually learn about a bad experience when someone opens a ticket. We wanted to reverse that order. I helped shape Experience Metrics as a single, user-centered view that turns signals across wireless, wired, WAN, and applications into a clearer answer: who is affected, what is failing, and where to look first.

  • Cisco
  • AgenticOps

To get there, I led product work across six engineering and three design teams, with feedback from 50 of Cisco's top customers. We focused on the moments that make a network feel broken—failed connections, slow time to connect, weak coverage, interference, authentication, DHCP, and DNS—and made the AI explain likely causes in plain language. Five months after the idea, we launched an experience that could handle more than 90% of the troubleshooting cases we set out to solve.

The larger idea was never just a faster diagnosis. AgenticOps connects detection, diagnosis, recommended action, human review, and validation into one loop, so teams can act before an issue becomes an incident without giving up control. Cisco later made that model a central part of its Assurance and agentic-workplace story, and I helped introduce it onstage to 21,000 people at Cisco Live.

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