The Seagate dictate: A data field of sustainable dreams

In one of the iconic scenes in the beloved 1989 baseball movie ‘Field of Dreams’, the ghost of legendary ballplayer Shoeless Joe Jackson (played by the late Ray Liotta) jogs off the cornfield-turned baseball diamond created by farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), pauses, turns back to Ray and calls out: "Hey, is this Heaven?" to which Ray responds, "No, it's Iowa."

That line is certainly familiar to Joan Motsinger, who grew up the youngest of six children on a family farm in Iowa. It was there she developed her strong work ethic which has served her well in her four-decade career at mass data storage solutions giant Seagate. During her Seagate tenure she has served in a variety of diverse leadership roles including Senior Vice President of Sustainability & Transformation, a position she has held for the past five years. Well-traveled, Motsinger has lived in Minnesota, Singapore and now calls Colorado home, but this week marked her first ever visit to Israel.

Welcome to Israel. What are your first impressions of ‘the startup nation’?

“Well, my first impression is ‘wow’! We should have been here a long time ago. I know that Seagate came to Israel about three years ago, but now that I see it for myself and I see the startup community and the innovative thinkers, it’s very inspiring. As far as those I have been able to meet with so far, I have seen that their commitment, specifically to sustainability, has been super impressive. We can put problems in front of them and they are not above saying ‘let me go think about that’. In Israel, they are bringing chemistry, biochemistry, logistics, and software solutions to bear. So, I’d say what’s going on in Israel now is pretty darn exciting.”

Although Israel is known as ‘the startup nation’, farming and agriculture have always played a key role in its identity, especially now with its booming agtech industry. Can you, as someone who personally grew up on a farm and now deals in sustainability, identify with that?

“I certainly do connect with it. I was really surprised though as I think of Israel as a relatively small country, yet I see all these fresh, clean vegetables. But the second surprise was how many innovative agrotech companies I have met in my short time here. So I am a little bit blown away. I grew up in the Midwest of the U.S. in an environment where there was a lot of space, so we used a lot of space to farm, but in Israel it’s different. So clearly Israel is bringing a lot of new technology and serving the needs of the local community and the country, and the wider world, and it’s all very impressive. As I said, I have already met several agrotech startups and also Israeli VCs investing in agrotech companies and I must admit that it surprised me, in a good way, but also humbled me as well as I really wasn’t aware of its vast scope. For Seagate, it’s just another opportunity to harvest the immense talent here in Israel.”

Tell us more about Seagate and your role as VP of Sustainability & Transformation? What does that entail?

“Seagate is a multinational company which was established in 1979 in the U.S. and has grown to become a global leader in data management and storage. We employ over 40,000 people around the globe, including over 40 in Israel. At Seagate, we all take different jobs. Some are more functional (finance, HR, R&D, etc.) and others are more enterprisal or global roles. The reason my title includes the words ‘sustainability’ and ‘transformation’ is because we really are committed at Seagate to crafting a sustainable data sphere, and when I say ‘sustainable’ I am talking about The Three P’s -we balance People, Planet, and Profit. We seek to do no harm to people or our planet, but of course we need to profit too. And if you get to visit Seagate, which I hope you will, you’ll see that our core values are ‘The Three I’s: Integrity, Inclusion’ and Innovation. That’s why we care so much about sustainability. At Seagate we’ve been here for 43 years and want to be here for the long run because data is growing and we believe there is a need to handle it responsibly and to do ‘good’ while doing ‘well’ for the world."

One of the purposes of your current visit to Israel is that Seagate is actively seeking new technologies and startups in the field of cloud and data that also provide an aspect of sustainability. Can you elaborate on what you are looking for in Israel and why specifically here?

“Well, sustainability is in our DNA, so we really want to make sure we are looking for any technologies that enable us to be sustainable, if that’s addressing water, waste, energy, recycling, reusing finite resources, etc. We really care about harnessing the technology and the ideas that are coming from the Israeli intellectual crew.

“The other thing that’s in our blood as Seagate is security. Because you want to know that you can trust me as a partner if I am going to be storing your data. You want that both as a consumer and as a business, whether it’s data on the cloud or on-prem. So while I am in Israel I am also talking to some security companies. I want to make sure we have the right product security so that you can trust that our products are secure, the data is secure, and the life cycle is secure.”

When you hear the terms “sustainability”, “environmental”, and “circular economy" the first thing that comes to mind is not information storage. Why is that so important?

“That’s a great question. The demand for exabytes (which is equal to one billion gigabytes) and the demand for data, is only growing and we are going to need electricity to fuel those. Right now, about 4% of the world’s energy fuels data centers alone (infrastructure, computer storage, etc.), but by 2030 that figure will rise to 10%. So we have the ability to have a huge impact on the earth. We must do right by this fact. That’s just one example of why I want you to think about circularity and think about the environment when you think about this industry of data.

“Another issue is that we are using finite resources. We use 61 elements from the periodic table when we design and manufacture our products, but we can’t be stripping the earth of that. We’ve got to come up with ways to use higher recycled content and replace nauseous chemicals. We have got to decarbonize and drive more circularity because that’s how ultimately we will contribute to the earth's sustainability and keep global warming down to minimums.

“Renewable energy is also something we embrace, which is called Scope 2 in environmental terms. At Seagate we have about 60% of our sites around the world fueled by renewable energy.

“But, most importantly we have to work in a collective. I am here in Israel now because we all have the same global mission, we have to drive ourselves towards net zero, and carbon neutrality is part of that. And the innovation here to drive that reduction, either through energy, decarbonization, or circularity is quite symbiotic. We must cooperate for the greater sustainable datasphere and sustainable world. This must be done in a collective - together.”

Seagate already has a presence in Israel in the form of Lyve Labs. Tell us about it and why it’s important.

“Lyve Labs in Israel was established nearly three years ago in early 2020 and is one of Seagate’s platforms, it’s almost one of our ‘brands’, you might say. As Seagate's innovation center it’s a collaborative platform through which Seagate partners with innovators, startups, and enterprises to create solutions that harness the flow of data. Lyve Labs is really a place where we can bring innovators together for the good of the “datasphere”, as we call it here at Seagate. There is a lot of data in the world and we want to enable that.

“This week I felt privileged to serve as a judge for the third annual Lyve Innovator of the Year competition in Tel Aviv, which focused on sustainability. There were some 50 entrants in total all bringing environmentally stable options to the table in fields such as water, plastics, cooling, and more and we narrowed them down to 8 finalists that are excellent in this arena. This year’s winner is plastic alternative startup Solutum, which develops plastic-like bags that are capable of fully dissolving and biodegrading in water.

"And our ultimate goal is to introduce these innovative and sustainably-focused Israeli startups to our Seagate network. Yes, we will give them some funding, but we also want to help them take their good idea, their startup, and scale it for impact. We are excited to discover great talents here in Israel and help them help make the world a better, and more sustainable place.”

You delivered a keynote address this week at the Climate Solutions Festival in Israel entitled “How Green is Your Tech?”. What should Israeli tech leaders be focused on when it comes to making their technology greener?

"First of all, I hope they are not ‘greenwashing’ with that title. For me, the question, “How green is your tech?” is asking ourselves are we moving beyond compliance to be transparent, measure, and get serious about decarbonization in our factories in our use of energy and in our value stream and how do you drive more circularity into our data centers.

“Look, we probably all grew up with the ‘take, make use, dispose’ mentality and we’ve got to stop that both in our personal lives and our work. You might say there’s a new economy emerging, and it’s not U.S. dollars or Israeli shekels, it’s a carbon credit. We want to be accountable to our carbon impact. When we ask ‘how green is your tech?’ we need to start thinking about it in terms of our global carbon footprint, but in terms of a new currency, the carbon currency."

Any final thoughts?

“Ultimately, we want to gather with like-minded companies in Israel and we want to move the needle in supply chains and to do that you have to address both sustainability and security.

“One more aspect that we are working on at Seagate, with two whole floors of experts here in Israel dedicated to it, is a service that can move our customers’ data to and from the cloud without fees. It’s called Lyve Cloud and we believe it’s the future of data storage without friction.

“But not only that, with Seagate you can be sure that we will take control of the hardware so you are not burdened by those carbon credits, the impact we mentioned before. We’ll keep that hard drive, refurbish it, reuse it, or recover the parts from it - it won’t end up in a landfill. That’s pretty critical. We want to put our arms around that hardware, it’s good for the planet. All this will keep the tech green.

“The bottom line is that if we want to leave a green world for future generations, the high-tech industry must work in cooperation and set clear goals to reduce the environmental impact in the field of data storage and in general."

As we wrapped up the interview, Motsinger marveled at the array of companies she spotted from her view at Seagate’s Lyve Labs offices. “It’s humbling to look out the window and see all our customers and our peers in the data industry have a presence here in Tel Aviv. So we’ve got to get started and fuel this innovation area.”

In Field of Dreams, the mysterious voice told Ray Kinsella, “If you build it (a baseball diamond in your cornfield), he will come.” Perhaps what brought Seagate’s Joan Motsinger to Israel was a similar voice, “If you build it, (a sustainable startup) she will come.”