Recently, I swapped my laptop and keyboard for work gloves and a shovel.

Thanks to Cisco's Time2Give benefit, which provides 80 hours of paid time off for employees to support causes they care about, a few of my colleagues from the Supply Chain Sustainability & Regulatory team and People & Communities spent a week in Maine's Acadia National Park with the Sierra Club and Friends of Acadia, restoring trails so hikers can enjoy them for years to come.

We camped inside the park, spending our days working alongside park rangers and conservation staff, and taking part in projects that have both immediate and lasting benefits for visitors and the landscape alike. One major effort we participated in was restoring hiking trails that had become overgrown, clearing soil and encroaching plants from pathways to make them safer and more accessible while protecting the plant life that borders them. In another project, we helped clean the summit of Cadillac Mountain - one of the park's most visited spots - removing litter to keep the natural beauty intact.

As someone who values spending time outdoors, giving back to a place as beautiful as Acadia was deeply personal. Volunteering through Time2Give is one way that we, as individual employees, can care for the environment directly, just as we make larger-scale impact through our daily work in sustainability.

Embodying Cisco's Purpose through local action is exactly what Time2Give was designed to support. By dedicating a workweek to trail maintenance, habitat care, and cleanup, our group directly contributed to building resilient ecosystems-part of Cisco's environmental sustainability strategy - and returned to our regular roles with renewed perspective and energy for the work ahead.

As someone who works in the sustainability space for Cisco, most of my environmental work happens from behind a computer - tracking impact, supporting strategies, collaborating virtually. But there's something powerful about stepping off the Wi-Fi and into the dirt, putting literal boots on the ground to care for a place. You see the difference immediately: a widened trail, trash collected, an extra smile from a hiker passing by. This trip was a chance to put that work into practice in a very direct way: touching the soil, removing encroaching vegetation (yes, even pulling actual grass roots ... talk about "grassroots" action!), and seeing the immediate impact of our stewardship.

The experience also offered something harder to quantify but equally valuable: connection. Like many Cisco employees, we work remotely across different regions. In Acadia, we shared campfire conversations instead of video calls, and teamwork meant passing tools down a trail rather than documents across email threads. Those in-person bonds strengthened our collaborative spirit - something we could bring back into our day-to-day work.

I'm grateful for Cisco's Time2Give program, which makes it easier to dedicate time to causes that matter to me, like I did through this experience. And I loved getting to connect in person with teammates from across the map, where camping and trail work became its own kind of team building.

By the end of the week, we had helped restore sections of trail, removed debris from one of the park's most treasured vistas, and supported ongoing conservation efforts that will benefit millions of visitors for years to come. Just as importantly, we gained a renewed sense of how our everyday work at Cisco - helping advance sustainability on a global scale - is deeply connected to this kind of hands-on service.

This week reminded me that sustainability happens on multiple scales - from the systems, strategies, and partnerships I support every day at Cisco, to the muddy, hands-on work of clearing trails and restoring ecosystems. Time2Give makes both possible, showing how strategy and stewardship work hand in hand.

This is what happens when great benefits enable employees to contribute our skills and energy to causes that matter: meaningful work, muddy boots, and memories that stick.

It's one of the many reasons I'm proud to build a career at Cisco - a place that empowers us to make a real difference, globally and locally.

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