Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Green Shoots & Big Shifts is hosted by Reetu Gupta, who started the show to have open, hopeful conversations about what it really takes to make sustainability part of how we live, lead, and work.
Each week, she talks with people doing innovative, meaningful work, turning ideas into action. From startup founders and corporate change-makers to community leaders - reimagining how business, society, and the planet can thrive together.
These are stories about innovation, collaboration, possibility, and the everyday shifts that move us toward a more abundant and resilient future.
you're listening to Green Shoots and Big Shifts
the show that spotlights the people and ideas
transforming our world for the better
I'm your host Reetu Gupta
in every episode
I'll be talking with innovators and trailblazers
who are reimagining our relationship with our planet
earth whether it's a small spark of innovation
or a sweeping shift in how we live and work
we'll explore the stories that give us hope
and the actions making a difference
together we are planting seeds of change
and driving big shifts for a healthier
abundant sustainable future
a huge welcome to our listeners
I am your host for green shoots and big shifts
and it is my great pleasure to introduce our guest
today and welcome her
so we have Stacy Cline
senior director of sustainability from GitLab
with us today welcome
welcome Stacy
thank you for joining us yes
thank you so much for having me
yeah it's
it's my pleasure so
just for our listeners let's just
you know would love to learn about your journey
your career arc and what got you to your current role
sure well
I started my career working in non profit
but my expertise was on the communications
and public relations side
and I was just really inspired
seeing the work that these non profits were doing
the impact that they were having
and I wanted to figure out
how I could have more of an impact
in this space
and so from there
I was able to transition to the corporate world
working in social impact where
I then spent 10 years in sort of every facet
of corporate social responsibility
from sponsorships and grants
cause marketing employee engagement
in kind donations and then eventually environmental
social and governance my current role at Gitlab
I lead our sustainability and social impact function
which is two main buckets of work
the first being
the compliance and reporting side of ESG
ESG regulations
and the stakeholder management that comes
along with that and then the second bucket of work um
around social impact
so that includes our climate action program
our employee volunteer program um
in our in kind donation program great
um that's really really helpful
what are like you talked a little bit about good
good lab and what you're doing there
if you were to paint in like broad strokes high level
what are your main mandates or goals in your current
current yeah
the main mandates and goals are of course
around monitoring ESG regulations and the
the current environment around ESG
making sure that 1
Gitlab is complying with ESG regulations
but then also how we are working with our stakeholders
primarily our customers
on what their sustainability goals are
what their expectations are for us
and making sure we have that strong
partnership with our customers yeah
makes sense so who who are your customers
well so Gitlab is a software company
so we have a lot of enterprise level customers
that use Gitlab to build their own software
within their own operations
so our our customers really span from
we have small businesses
we have medium sized companies
and we have enterprise companies
very interesting I know you mentioned that
part of your goal is to make sure your customers
you know they have requirements
and they have goals around sustainability that
and you are supporting them as well
how does how does
can you give us an example what that looks like
and how does that translate into your goals
and projects that you are working on
yeah so for example
we get hundreds of RFPs
and questionnaires from our customers every year
because our customers are enterprise customers
they have their own sustainability requirements
they have to adhere to certain ESG regulations
and so part of what they need
when they're going through their process
and looking at their emissions data
is they need the data from their vendors
which Gitlab is a vendor
and so if we're able to report and reduce our emissions
that in turns helps our customers
and so that's a big focus for us
is understanding what are our customers requirements
and how can we help them achieve those goals
which also help us achieve our own goals as well
yeah that's very interesting
and does you said these are part of Rfps
so it looks like complying with
or helping them comply with their ESG
role goals is tied to your business goals as well
and it's it's not just about
let's just do this for good of the planet
or good of the world there is real ROI and real revenue
strategies attached there
can you speak to like how as a business
you think about sustainability as one of the pillars
helping you achieve your your business goals
yeah I
I mean this is
one of the reasons that
I was so drawn to sustainability
is that the field is constantly evolving
and right now
it really feels like we're at this inflection point
where it's
more important than ever to tie sustainability
directly to business objectives
and this means translating sustainability
work into things like revenue
competitive advantage and customer retention
and it's really important to map those sustainability
priorities to those existing company objectives
so as I talked about
we receive hundreds of RFPs and customer questionnaires
every year our customers
have certain sustainability requirements from us
like this signal is clear
many of our customers care deeply about sustainability
especially with the rise of ESG regulations
and if we wanna remain easy to do business with
and we wanna be a preferred vendor
we need to meet those expectations like that
that are a lie right right
that makes a lot of sense
it goes looks like
straight to the top line growth for the company
and you said you are a software company
I'm trying to understand like
I can understand like if you have a chemical plant
like how do you you know you
you have energy requirements
you have footprint etc etc
what does it look like for a software company
yeah so it's
it is different um
you know we
we don't have any owned offices or facilities
so our entire emissions footprint is scope 3
with over
half of those emissions coming from the suppliers
we work with
which means our energy consumption is also indirect
and so our work looks a little bit different
but one of the things that we were seeing
most frequently with our customers
was they wanted to understand what their emissions
were from using our software
and so what we did with that is we created a committee
which we call our Green Devops Committee um
and this looks to address
those customer requests and requirements around
what our customers
can do to reduce their energy consumption
while using Gitlab
yeah that's
it's interesting
so would that mean like things like you're doing
like how you're building your software
or product innovation yeah
I'm just I'm just trying to think about like if I
so for example like I'm using different software
and so what you're telling me
like different softwares can have a different
emission profile
depending on how they are built or how they are used
yeah so we think about green Devops
or green software in two ways
so the first way is looking primarily at
our product and our AI features
and like I said that's in
response to these growing customer requests
and expectations
but then we also look at our internal usage of AI
and how we can educate and equip our employees
on the carbon cost of AI
so our Green Devops committee does that
so it brings together leaders from engineering
from product from Finops
and sustainability to identify and implement
sustainable practices across the entire software
development life cycle and
that committee is broken down into different working
groups so we focus on five different areas
we look at cloud sustainability
we look at CICD pipeline sustainability
sustainable AI community engagement
innovation and then reporting and analytics
so we look across a broad spectrum of things
across the software development life cycle
to understand like
what are the what do we have control over
like
what are the infrastructure decisions that we can make
to understand our energy consumption
understand what our our customers energy consumption
and then take meaningful action yeah
that seems very robust that's a very robust framework
and it makes a lot of sense
I can see you know yeah it's sustainable
it is meeting a particular request
that your customers have made
but it's also
I can imagine there are tertiary benefits
it's like of all
all the stakeholders at the same table yeah
it can have other tertiary benefits around
product innovation and efficiencies and
and working together I
I would assume some of them also that you had not like
it's not exactly what the committee was for
so you mentioned um AI and you know
you can't
have a conversation nowadays without talking about
about AI and you know
given all the different tools
you talked about using AI for development
and how critical it has become
but it is in the energy um
energy intensive water intensive as you mentioned
and you
and one of the pillars you talked about is how you are
looking at being more efficient in using AI
can you talk through how do you balance innovation
and shipping out a product that your customers
want and need versus like
usage of AI like how do you balance the two
yes it's a very important balance as you call out
AI is increasingly critical
but it can be energy intensive
we focus right now on the things that we
we can't control
so as part of our Sustainable AI Working Group
there's two recent initiatives that I can highlight
the first being that we launched AI
Model vendor guidelines
so this is public documentation
establishing Gitlab's
framework for evaluating and selecting the vendors
who develop the models powering our AI products
and the vendors who host those models
so we have a sustainability section in those guidelines
so while we ourselves
we're not developing our own models
we make it very clear from the start
in our procurement process
like this is something we care about
and we expect the vendors
that we're doing business with to also care about this
and then on the flip side internally
we've started educating team members
on how they can use AI more efficiently
which can help reduce our footprint
and we've been working closely with our enterprise AI
team to on this
and to integrate sustainability
into responsible use criteria um
and this was just recent
as part of our Earth Month series
we hosted this webinar
that went over the environmental impact of AI
and then really dove into actions
that our teams can take to use AI
most efficiently and responsibly
and we had our Chief Information Officer
who oversees enterprise AI kick off this webinar
and that was really powerful
because we wanted the message to be super clear
like we are not discouraging use of AI
we are encouraging responsible use
we know this this is important
and we're gonna continue to take small actions
to use AI for the biggest impact
and do so responsibly
and we're super committed to being transparent
about our progress as we figure this out
take these small actions and advance this work
and part of how we frame this is using AI well
means using it intentionally
and part of that intentionality is understanding
what we're actually setting in motion
when we use AI tools
that's including the energy and the resources behind
every prompt every query
every automated workflow
and being thoughtful about when and how you
use AI choosing the right tools for the task
avoiding unnecessary compute
and understanding the trade offs
that's gonna make us all better
and more deliberate users
yeah that
that's that sounds so interesting
and like really deep thought and right from top
from the leadership um
which is so critical
when you're trying to create a new behavior
or a new change as you were talking
I was also thinking like you know
compute using all that AI compute is
is you know
depending on how much you're using
it can get expensive it's not
it's not free right
you you have to have a
it's a cost that you have to pay
and this is again going
making your business more sustainable over the long run
even from a cost perspective
by embedding those really good habits and behaviours
right from the beginning so good for the
good for the planet good for the business
good for your customers it seems you guys are doing a
a great job there and I know you mentioned a little bit
like for your vendor procurement
you have certain criteria that they have to meet
to be a vendor um
now it's flipping a little bit
like from your vendor's perspective
when they're trying to meet your requirements
are there any creative strategies that they have used
like you know
for example
locating data center in one place versus other
or yeah anything else that you might have come across
yeah I think what's important to highlight is
with all vendors AI vendors especially
like we're not the only
the people asking for this information
uh huh everyone's trying to figure it out right now
so we're very flexible in how we work with our vendors
to understand like
what are you currently tracking
where is there a gap
where is there room to meet some of these expectations
and just really understanding the journey
that they're on
and how we can work together to achieve
these mutual goals so there
there's a lot of decisions and things that we can make
there's a lot of decisions
infrastructure decisions that we can make
like for example how efficiently we use compute
how and where we run our AI workloads
how we design these product features
like all of those decisions impact
our indirect energy consumption and emissions
so it's there's a lot of different pieces
but we're really committed to
just working with our vendors
and understanding what they're doing
what's working what isn't
and we're all learning this together
yeah I love that they are
you know your vendors
if you look at all your stakeholders
you're saying they are also a vendor voice at the table
you're working with them very collaboratively
which makes a lot of sense
and it's it's a great best practice
um so again
shifting gears a little bit
you mentioned a lot of companies are also asking
the vendors the AI vendors
for the same thing
for companies who might not be further along
or might be just starting or smaller um
as they start to think about linking
digital product innovation with sustainability
what are maybe some of the best practices
lessons Learned
or even failures that you can share from your journey
that might help you know
one of our listeners or someone who's liking
is trying to do the same as you are
yes well
you made a really good point earlier
about connecting the dots between sustainability
and cost and business value
and that's I mean
that's it right there the goal is for sustainability
to be a part of the conversation
that our leaders are already having
on digital product innovation
like no matter the size of your
the company
companies are talking about product innovation
they're talking about AI and so
the goal is to get sustainability there
to show this isn't a separate initiative
it's a part of it right
less waste to compute means lower missions
which means lower cost more efficiency
these things are all tied
and so it's really important to make that clear
from the start and it's equally as important to ground
the work in real stakeholder demand
and not just theory so
we were able to make traction
with our green Devops work
because we continued to get more and more requests
from our customers so
making the business case is a lot easier
when you can tie the work back
to business objectives
and those real stakeholder expectations
and requirements and I would also just add like
it's so important to build the cross functional support
and take the time to understand
the objectives of different internal stakeholders
and how you can work together
because if you approach sustainability
and digital product
innovation is like a separate initiative
it's just it's not gonna get the traction right now
our teams are all working so hard
no one needs more work like
this has to be integrated
into what's already happening within the business
and the value needs to be clear right yeah
that's such a great point
and it looks like you at Gitlab are doing
it in a very systematic integrated way
which you know
which is a good practice
it's a best practice and you don't always see it
so all Kudos to you and you and your team
um anything you would like to share anything
you know this has been a great conversation
I've Learned so much think
you know
our listeners are always looking for those nuggets of
like oh
learning and curiosities
anything you would like to share
I think the
the last piece I'll add is this is new to a lot of us
a lot of us are just trying to figure this out
and we're trying to learn from one another
and so my recommendation is just like
look to see what else is out there
and what resources are available
and I'll tie this back to Gitlab
and that Gitlab has an open source code base
which has been really key for us
because we've been able to tap into our developer
community
knowing there are a lot of people out there
who are really passionate about sustainability
and passionate about sustainable AI
and want to contribute to this work
and one of the areas that we found a lot of success in
was tapping into that community to find
solutions that help us and our customers
so we um
we ran a hackathon
where we encouraged anyone to develop an agent using
GitLabs Duo Agent platform
that could have a meaningful sustainability impact
and so
this is allowing us to build out our catalog of agents
and flows that any of our customers can then use
with Gitlab uh huh
and just with that hackathon
we had over 70 submissions
for people who are thinking about like
oh if you could add this AI agent or this flow
this can reduce your energy consumption
this can give you this data
report on how you're consuming energy
and so it was really incredible to see
like all of the knowledge that's out there
and all of that information is publicly available
anyone can go see all of these submissions on Gitlab
and so there's the information out there
look to see what's there
tap into those existing resources
and know that iteration is key
measuring software missions is a challenge
we don't have all the answers yet
but we're just gonna continue taking small actions
thank you for sharing that resource
and what's the best way for people to access it
is it on your website
or how do how do they access these resources
yes you can actually get the Gitlab AI catalog
you can go there
there's a whole list of all of the AI agents and flows
there there's a search bar
you can search green and that will pull up
like the sustainability specific agents and flows
wow that's wonderful
that's amazing
to have a resource there for people to use
and it looks like they can also develop their own
agents and stuff like that
through events like those hackathons that you have
well it has been a great pleasure to have you on
on the podcast
I hope the listeners found it interesting
and took away some like
gems for their own journeys
before I wrap up I like to ask a final question
if you were to leave our audience with one word
uh for today what would that be
um I think the one word is intentional
uh huh in this fast moving world
that has become more fast somehow
with AI I think it's more important than ever to stop
pause and be really intentional about everything
but how we think about sustainability
how we integrate sustainability
what tools
and how we use these tools to advance our work
and just always bring it back to that
what is the intention yeah
I love that word intentional
just from my journey of using AI
when I first started using it
I was all over the place and then I'm like
and I wasn't getting the best results also
because I was all over the place
what I realized is when I pause and I'm intentional
and I write thoughtful about what I'm asking
I get better results
and obviously I'm using less compute
less energy that way so thank you
thank you for that word with that
I would love to thank you
and thank you for your time today Stacy
yes thank you so much I really appreciate it