Susanna is a CxO who has scaled new ventures from the ground up to $billions in revenue in cloud, data center infrastructure. Susanna is a trailblazer decorated with numerous industry accolades in leading sustainability designs as a computer scientist and inventor. She is familiar with and excelling at a fast pace realm working in cloud, AI, data center infrastructure, and in her executive operation roles for over 33 years has led internet startups from the ground up to success across 18 countries in collaboration with AI pioneers and cloud hyperscalers; Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Meta, AWS, Apple, Equinix, Goldman Sachs, Akamai, to name a few and had held global executive management roles in Fortune 100 Enterprise organizations and startups; eBay, HP, Sun Microsystems, Trilliant Networks, Baselayer, InfraPrime. Her experience is extensive to collaborate with the leading Cloud providers with Enterprise executives; and as a contributor researcher to IPCC, John Hopkins University, National University of Singapore, DTU, Cornell, Columbia and Stanford University to explore the realms of decarbonization of digital infrastructure, AI Sovereignty, and urban sustainability designs. Susanna is exemplary in leading design to build data centers; and scaling accelerated computing and business critical systems infrastructure; using clean energy and decarbonization designs reliably across geographical locations to reach corporate sustainability targets; making impact results and creating scientific breakthroughs for planet, people and profitability.
Susanna recently was recognized by Data Center Magazine in February 2025 as 5th in the Top 10 Data Centre Global Leaders alongside Dr. Lisa Su, Chair and CEO at AMD, Matt Garman, CEO at AWS, co-founder and CEO, Jensen Huang at Nvidia, Andrew Power, President and CEO, Digital Realty. Susanna won an industry prestigious award by Data Center Dynamics in London for her Life Time Achievement Award in Global Data Center and Digital Infrastructure. She is ranked 1st of the Top 10 Sustainability Leaders Award by Data Centre Magazine. She was again recognized as 1st of the Top 10 Women in Data Center in USA and 4th of the Top 10 Women in Data Center in the World, and Top 50 Climate Change Leaders in the past two decades for her exemplary results. Her approach is relentlessly focus to invert status quo to drive impact results through design, customer centricity process to deliver on resilience and performance metrics; sharpen the focus on time to market advantages, meet the Carbon Neutrality pledges. She extensively uses AI technology to advance carbon intensity reduction, maximize the effectiveness of resources usage to promote business economic growth of her clients’ data centers investments in accelerated computing and net zero digital infrastructures. Susanna believes that CxO are climate change pioneers as well as AI business entrepreneurs leaders who have the acumen to lead organizations to create green jobs, deliver triple bottom line results; simultaneously through AI training paving the way for future generations to embrace AI technology, to nurture the company’s ability to innovate and upskills humanity safety. Susanna works with her clients by embracing design thinking methodology on product and service innovation, acts concisely on science-based targets, machine learning (ML) intelligence; tying it all together to operate efficiently, to integrate effectively, to absorb and adapt external forces; to tackle geo-political uncertainties, regulatory conformance facing climate change
Susanna thrives in fast pace change in organizations that is massively accelerated by the rate of innovation through Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The traditional perspective that data is a byproduct of operations, accessed only to data scientists is essential but Susanna finds it to be insufficient. The data including generative AI data is now regarded as the leading driver of business value. The recognition of each entrepreneur and CIO acknowledges the impact and rate of innovation of AI far exceed any top data priorities for the past digital transformation years; including cloud platforms, data management and analytics. Accelerated Computing is transforming Moore’s Law to new realms for all types of data; unstructured, streaming and AI generative content in massive volumes in an unprecedented pace
Susanna Kass: Leading the Charge toward an AI and Carbon Free World
In the quest to scale growth and simultaneously minimize climate change’s impact and avert global warming’s most dire consequences, achieving a carbon free future is imperative. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has underscored the significance of reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions around mid-century to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This ambitious endeavor calls for transformative changes in how we produce and consume energy, eliminate emission, reduce resources consumption and create new value from waste; hence necessitating a shift away from fossil fuels, embracing clean energy alternatives such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear power, and adopting clean fuels like hydrogen.
Against this backdrop, visionary leader like Susanna Kass, the Co-founder of InfraPrime, is at the forefront, driving the charge towards a carbon free future. In a world often dominated by men and profit-driven motives, Kass’s distinct approach embodies a new breed of authentic leadership as a woman that champions clean energy and acts as an influential energy ethics ambassador. Her determination to transform companies focusing on people, the planet, and profit sets a powerful example as a women in a male dominated IT industry for those who chose to follow her as she is voted as one of the Top 10 Data Center Leaders to follow on Linked In.
Kass is a beacon of inspiration for women leaders and the young generations today. Her commitment to scale growth sustainably and environmental responsibility has earned her a well-deserved reputation as one of our time’s most inspiring women leaders and most admired by the young generations. Her authentic leadership style reshapes the clean energy landscape and in her collaboration as net zero pioneer in the data center industry with the premier innovators in the AI era of the Net Zero movement.
Global market analysts estimated the market shall reach $100+ Trillion in AI on top of a yearly 40% growth of a $900+Billion Cloud Computing market, she is uniquely positioned to spearhead sustainability investments growth for environment impact of her clients to deliver on the Carbon Neutrality pledges by 2030 and 2040.
Sustainable Data Center Innovator and Women Entrepreneur
Kass is a distinguished figure in the data center industry, known for her passion and commitment to good science, business impact results to deliver growth performance throughout the data center lifecycle in a circular economy. As an Energy Fellow, lecturer at Stanford University and a researcher contributor to Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), a board advisor to the Stanford Graduate Management Board (GMB) Women’s Circle, a data center advisor to the United Nations Sustainable Development Program (UN SDG-EP), a founder and co-Chair for the Data Cloud Talent in Tech Initiative with Technoraco, she demonstrates a holistic understanding of grooming the next generations leadership by exemplary results in setting science-based targets in her data center carbon free designs and sustainability practices to enrich young talents to create an urban sustainability system. With an impressive career success spanning globally over three decades, Kass has held worldwide chief executive, chief operating, chief sustainability and co-founder, executive general management data center business operation management roles in startup companies and Global 100 organizations like eBay, HP, Oracle/Sun Microsystems, NextEra Energy, Baselayer Inc., Kass has collaborated with clients including Nvidia, Goldman Sachs, Akamai, Meta-Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, AWS, and John Hopkins University managed global data centers and 7000+ people teams across 18 countries. Her passion for sustainability and innovation has led her to 4.1-Gigawatt Clean Energy Data Center projects using renewable energy, liquid-cooled data center, zero generators, emissions are reused to transport data center waste heat to Olympic games pools for district heating and cooling to communities, and the electronic waste is reused to provide new value to low-income citizens in communities.
Kass’s journey as a sustainability pioneer is highlighted by her strategic roles in various organizations and her dedication to achieving a carbon free future. She has become a leading advocate for sustainable practices in the data center industry as an inventor of her new patents and multiple Top 10s and Most Admired Women and Mother awards accolades. As the COO of International Operations for eBay and General Manager at Hewlett Packard and senior executive roles at NextEra Energy, Baselayer, Oracle/Sun Microsystems, she honed her expertise in listening, develop a customer-centric approach to scale business growth. She has extensive research software programming skills, AI work experience to drive design thinking products and services, built and led distributed teams across 18 countries to operate hyperscale data centers for over 33 years for hyperscale cloud, accelerating computing projects; site selection, land acquisition, land development, build, commissioning, net zero operations on a global scale.
Pioneers of Net Zero Investments
Established in 2019, InfraPrime co-founders was the recipient of the European Union research grants to lead the Hydrogen Net Zero Initiatives, the company had contributed its expertise in its collaboration with Google, Microsoft hyperscale providers of the establishment of the Net Zero Innovation Hub to foster new carbon free emission projects in EMEA. Currently, Susanna is an Operating Partner for Digital Gravity Infrastructure Partner on the Net Zero Accelerator Fund, an inventor and Senior Advisor to establish Absolute Zero Availability Zone(s) digital infrastructure with the electric and grid operators, her role is to invest and design Absolute Zero cloud and accelerated computing projects. It is a private and public collaboration Digital Infrastructure global portfolio in gigawatt scale.
Inspiring Entrepreneurs in the Next Generation
In addition to her extensive work in the industry, Kass actively participates in academia to inspire and educate the next generation sustainability leaders to join the data center sector. As an Energy Fellow at Stanford University, a Charles Rudd Distinguished Lecturer, a research contributor to the IPCC and United Nations SDG-EP, Kass collaborates with youths PhD, Master, Bachelor graduate students in environmental sustainability, AI, computer science, engineering, urban environmental disciplines. She instills in them a comprehensive understanding of AI, cloud, data meta structures and fosters sustainability-driven thinking that promote clean energy projects and net-zero outcomes to benefit the society.
Through her mentorship and thought leadership, Kass has mentored over 1000+ youths who expressed interest in sustainability, IT, digital infrastructure and data center, she empowers the next generation to embrace climate change challenges and drive innovation in the data center infrastructure industry. Kass is a founder and Chair for Data Cloud Talent in Tech Initiative, an educational gateway to transform the next generation of the Data Center industry to welcome young talents using their literacy to collectively drive sustainable change for the data center industry in the AI era. Within Stanford University, Kass also contributes as a Climate Change Researcher for Stanford University Graduate School of Business and at Doerr School of Sustainability as a guest lecturer in the Urban Sustainable Systems Design. Her thought-provoking lecture parallels design thinking session to instill sustainability thinking in everyday life, to enrich the academic environment and encourage students to pursue sustainable solutions in the urban environment designs. As of publication, Kass is cited in WSJ, Forbes, CIO Magazine, Data Center journals, Linked In, she is a chapter author of the Greener Data Volume II published by JSA, the book is ranked as top best seller in two categories on Amazon Best Seller list.
Embracing Humanity and AI Safety
Kass is a dedicated humanity leader, a clean energy strategist who leads by influence and exemplifies a purpose aligned with her passion. Her work revolves around making a difference with people and leaving a lasting legacy in pursuing a sustainable future in the AI era. Using her research acumen, strategic planning skills, and listen patient approach, Kass actively engages with AI scientists, cloud computing builders, data center operators, renewable energy developers and entrepreneurs worldwide. Her commitment to humanity sets her apart, which she considers a habitual ethics and people first best practice in every aspect of her work. With a profound commitment of the value of AI humanity and safety, Kass relates and connects with ideas without prejudice. This approach fosters meaningful connections that inspire and motivate others to embrace humanity in their thinking and practices. She positively impacts people, and the larger scientific communities by encouraging open research, transparency, collaboration in an open-sourced environment.
One of InfraPrime’s groundbreaking products, which Kass has played a vital role in driving 24/7 clean energy generation for Net Zero availability zone when the electric grid is not 100% clean to support her clients’ Carbon Neutrality Goals. And, in the adoption of decarbonization to harnesses the massive volume of heat waste from data centers to provide district heating and cooling to the communities for societal, environmental and cost savings benefits, by utilizing CO2 as a thermal carrier for data center sector, this innovation benefits InfraPrime’s data center clients regenerating from waste heat to district cooling and heating services to their communities, contributes to sustainability by reducing emissions footprints. These advancements have a direct social benefit, particularly in communities with access to cost-effective cooling and heating without the need of the grid and paying costly electricity bills.
Kass’s primary ambition is nothing short of transformative. Her vision is to innovate in the accelerating computing AI era to not burden the electric grid in the mass increase of energy demand consumption. She advocates to invert the status quo of an energy demand-supply of data center operators with the grid operators, for both to act as co-contributors to improve energy resiliency, energy generation-transmission-distribution performance of the digital infrastructure based on service level agreement; and to make the electric grid affordable and green, eliminate giga tons of emissions on a global scale from the grid, and foster economic savings to benefit communities of 24/7 AI data centers for the people and business to thrive in a carbon free grid in our current era to pave the way for the next generations. She advocates for Carbon Neutral Supplier Responsibility for data centers, driving the industry towards a future that prioritizes zero emission for materials, building and construction, adopting embodied carbon materials that act as carbon storage during the net zero operations. Kass’s approach to supply chain sustainability and her emphasis on carbon neutrality may seem impossible, she is determined to research and collaborate with inventors, clients and partners on carbon materials standards and make it an affordable alternative materials for the developing and developed countries to meet the UN SDG goals.
Looking Beyond
Kass envisions a fundamental shift in emissions disclosures for entrepreneurs and AI investors, where climate risk is a critical and not an optional consideration. To address this social costs of ownership challenge, Kass’s leadership approach centers on seizing each moment to drive meaningful change— science-based approach and fact checked investment. We continue to celebrate progress, live each moment to advance towards our best potential to serve others. A philosophy shared with the Stanford University GSB; “Dedicated to the things that haven’t happened yet and the people who are about to dream them up” furthering her commitment to empowering the next generation young professionals to thrive in a sustainable lifestyle.
Guided by Faith and Family
Beyond her professional achievements, Kass believes in connecting with her inner calling and staying grounded in facing challenges and setbacks. Her strong faith and practice of equanimity fuel her resilience and determination to overcome obstacles. Kass draws inspiration from her two daughters’ character and their dedication to becoming global citizens committed to positively impacting future generations. Her daughters, Bronte and Elle Kass, are accomplished individuals who have completed their bachelor’s and are now actively pursuing advanced medical degrees in neuroscience research and working abroad as a Foreign Service Diplomat in the field of Public Diplomacy. Their commitment to making a difference in the world is a testament to the Kass’ family and her influence as a supporting parent.
Kass’s gratitude extends to her strong faith, her family and Mother Nature, and she strives to harmonize her life living as a minimalist on a plant-based diet and sustainable practices. As a clean energy strategist, she advocates and inspire others to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle.
Quote
“As Entrepreneur, we become the guards for future generations that come behind us so they too can make the same choice as we do today.” , said Susanna Kass,
“The current era of Artificial Intelligence has and shall disrupt human-led Digital Transformation, we are all in the same sustainability journey to promote A Carbon Free Economy. Invert the status quo of a linear economy, embrace innovation to advance sustainability, promote peace and human digital and drive economic growth for global society.”
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