Nicola J. Acutt is a seasoned sustainability and business leader with over 20 years of experience driving transformative strategies at the intersection of technology, operations, and culture. As NetApp’s inaugural chief sustainability officer (CSO) since 2024, she has integrated sustainability across the enterprise, accelerated decarbonization priorities in the value chain, and shaped strategy for building a sustainable approach to intelligent data infrastructure.

Building on 14 years as CSO at VMware, Acutt brings a proven track record of translating strategy into action across research and development, human resources, finance, operations, and legal functions. She excels at partnering with domain leaders to develop business cases, manage budgets, and deliver financial discipline with operational flexibility. Acutt is passionate about the human dimension of sustainability and embeds values and culture into employee experience, fostering environments that boost productivity, retention, and engagement. She has a collaborative leadership style and cross-functional expertise that enable her to drive growth and transformation.

Acutt has served as an advisor to climate technology start-ups and is an active participant in World 50 and the Aspen Institute. She holds a bachelor of science from the University of California, Berkeley and earned a Commonwealth Scholarship to complete her doctorate at the University of East Anglia.