Anu Brookins

Anu is Master Black Belt and Leader, Continuous Improvement Center of Excellence at Cisco. Anu has a team of Master Black Belt Six Sigma professionals that support Cisco leaders in fostering digital continuous improvement in their organizations, train/ mentor fellow employees in digital process improvement, and lead strategic projects. Her team is also innovating the Six Sigma methodology to include Data Science tools, agile methodology, CRISP-DM and Decision Modeling tools into Six Sigma.

Prior to joining Cisco, Anu was vice president, customer insights & analytics at Belk Inc. She has a broad experience across banking (Bank of America), financial services (Transamerica Real Estate Tax Service), travel (Sabre) and Software (SAS Institute) industries. Anu is currently vice chair, Advisory Board, for the Data Science & Business Analytics initiative of the University of North Carolina Charlotte. She is a part-time faculty at the Belk College of Business, UNCC, where she has taught in Executive Education, MBA, DSBA and Undergraduate programs.

Anu has served on the Board of Directors for Child Care Resources Inc. (CCRI) and the Analytics and Big Data Society of Charlotte. She has had many speaking engagements, including conferences hosted by UNCC in Charlotte, and keynote address at Elon University’s Analytics conference. She is passionate about diversity initiatives and was instrumental in founding Belk’s Women’s Leadership Network (WLN), Black Employee Resource Group (BERG) and Belk Asian Society for Innovation & Achievement (BASIA).

Anu obtained M.S. in Computer Science and M.S. in Mathematics from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) in India, and M.S. and PhD in Operations Research from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She served as President of Mathematics Association at BITS, and has published papers in Annals of Operations Research, SAS User Group International, and Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society. She has trained and certified over 500 Green Belts, Black Belts and Master Black Belts, and mentored many women in the community.

Anu’s many hobbies include fitness, oil painting, community service, and spending time with her husband, Gary, her son, Alexander (in college), and her German Shepherd, Shiba (10 months).