That ladder gets a little easier to climb when contributions are more than monetary, as shown in Cisco’s F1 Academy partnership.
Going beyond the track
In October 2023, Cisco expanded its Formula 1 partnership to include sponsorship of McLaren’s F1 Academy program that placed its branding on Filipino driver Bianca Bustamante’s car, overalls, and team uniforms in 2024. In 2025, Cisco will extend the same sponsorship to McLaren’s newest F1 Academy addition, Welsh driver Ella Lloyd. A McLaren partner since 2021, Cisco rolled the new F1 Academy sponsorship into its 60 Scholars initiative with McLaren that creates paths to STEM careers for women.
“When McLaren came to us and said, ‘Hey, Susie Wolff is doing this driver academy thing, are you interested?’ We didn’t even hesitate,” said Carrie Palin, Cisco’s CMO. “In less than 24 hours, we’re like, ‘Not only are we interested, we want to be the title sponsor for McLaren’s driver.’”
During one of Palin’s first conversations with Wolff, she spoke about enrolling in a program for early-stage career executives while working at Dell in 2013.
Though Palin was “heavily pregnant” with her second child, she enrolled in a weeklong course at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business that helped her interview for her first senior executive position shortly thereafter, learning things like body language and how to own her space when in the boardroom.
“I learned that things I was doing that I thought made me agreeable—like leaning into a conversation and nodding my head—actually were making me look deferential,” Palin said. “[It was] all these different things that I never knew.”
With that in mind, Palin has already spoken with Wolff about getting the same training for F1 Academy drivers to help them manage their contracts, social media presence, press acumen, and other business concerns.
