It Takes a Village: Data Centers and Sustainability

In this engaging episode of Nomad Futurist, Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence are joined by Jaymie Scotto Cutaia, a leading figure in marketing for the telecom and data center industries worldwide. As CEO and founder of Jaymie Scotto & Associates (JSA), Scotto heads an award-winning firm specializing in public relations, marketing, and event planning, with a focus on the industry. At JSA, she is responsible for overseeing every aspect of the company’s operations, from finance and marketing to public relations, event management, advisory board coordination, and product execution. With extensive experience in both domestic and international markets, Scotto brings a unique journalistic perspective to strategic content creation for telecom, data center, and technology companies, whether public or private.Joining from Las Vegas, Nevada, Scotto shared more details about JSA, which will be celebrating 20 years of business in January 2025. The JSA staff is dedicated to supporting the digital infrastructure space as well as their clients who are doing big things within the space such as building out networks and connecting them to data centers.“We're all sort of guided by a core mission and core values to really build this network for global communications, empowering economies, governments, and communities to be better and perform better, but in a sustainable manner. We are committed to our industry, our JSA family, our clients, but also to the planet.”Scotto’s journey in the data infrastructure space began when she was interviewed by Telx, an interconnection company, early in her career and eventually became the head of marketing and PR for the company. With the option to join a wide variety of industries before striking out on her own and starting JSA, Scotto decided to enter the data infrastructure industry due to the inspiration she felt with the Telx story and people that work there.“I believe that our industry is about relationships. It's about growing together. I think you have to have a passion for it. You have to understand what it means, locally and globally… I'm glad that we can do this physically through connections of networks and data centers and businesses, but I'm also glad that we can do it spiritually and emotionally in our homes.”Fast forward to the COVID-19 pandemic, after giving birth to her daughter, Scotto realized that she wanted to do her part to give her daughter a sustainable earth. With her daughter in mind, Scotto created a sustainability project, Greener Data, that has led to a bestseller book, website, news platform, and more. Due to a growing need and the support from fellow digital infrastructures, Greener Data has grown into a reliable, informative resource on data centers for industry members from various perspectives.“At the time, there was a really crazy prediction that I read that currently, the draw of data centers and data networks was 3 to 4 percent global energy consumption and that was a lot, a lot of emissions, and I felt very responsible. This was our industry. AI wasn't a thing when this prediction was made, and so I'm looking down at this baby and these numbers are going through my brain and I'm like, ‘I don't know how to solve it, but one thing I do know is [that] I know I have a network of very smart people, these technologists, who can really solve for this together if we can all work together.’”It is not uncommon for people to be hesitant about the idea of data centers being built which is why Scotto believes it is important for those in the data infrastructure community to support one another. With everyone having similar goals such as a positive public image, educating communities, or reducing energy consumption, collaborating and sharing ideas or lessons is a unique as well as integral part of the industry. It’s up to the next generation to continue with this communication in the community.“This is apparently the first year in our industry where the gens and millennials outnumber the boomers. So now, we're at that tipping point. Now we really need to understand key educational communication strategies like, what's motivating them, how do we talk to them, where are they to even approach them and touch them and get them excited about our infrastructure industry? So this is the time when podcasts like this are so much more relevant too. They're not out there, getting an email about us, right? But they're certainly out there listening to podcasts.”From her early career to being CEO of her own business, Scotto has acknowledged and appreciated all the people along the way who helped her get to where she is today in the industry. Without the support of other leading data infrastructure members, breakthroughs and milestones are not made, which Scotto clearly lays out in this can't-miss episode.To learn more about Jaymie and JSA, you can visit her website or find her on X, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.📖 The Amazon Best Seller “Greener Data – Volume Two” is the definitive and timely guide, of, for and by our digital infrastructure industry, on how to get our data centers and bandwidth-intensive networks greener, now and in the near future. The book focuses on four key sustainability topics facing the digital infrastructure industry:Aligning MeasurementsRenewable & Clean Energy SolutionsPower & Cooling InnovationsThe Financial & Social Benefits of Going GreenBuy "Greener Data - Volume Two" on Amazon here.To learn more about "Greener Data - Volume Two" and the industry-led movement, visit GreenerData.net.