NetApp – Yu-Ting Lin – 2025
Summary
Luci Lin advanced NetApp’s climate resilience, sustainability transparency, and operational efficiency through strategic sustainability initiatives.
Goals
NetApp, a global leader in data management and cloud storage, enlisted Luci Lin to identify and address key sustainability risks and opportunities. As sustainability expectations rise across customers, investors, and regulators, NetApp aimed to strengthen its climate strategy, improve sustainability disclosures, and streamline customer communications. Lin’s fellowship focused on building tools and frameworks to support long-term sustainability planning and stakeholder engagement.
Solutions
Luci Lin led three core projects during her 12-week fellowship. She partnered with the NetApp sustainability team to facilitate NetApp’s first Climate Risk Assessment, evaluating physical and transition risks across tier 1 and significant facilities and major manufacturers under multiple climate scenarios. She also performed a disclosures gap analysis, benchmarking NetApp against best practices, identifying metrics for improvement and prioritizing items for immediate and longer-term strategic planning. Lastly, Lin created a centralized Sustainability FAQ database from 500+ customer inquiries and tested an AI chatbot prototype to automate responses. These three solutions were designed to enhance NetApp’s climate resilience, align reporting with investor expectations, and improve operational efficiency.
Potential Impact
If fully implemented, Lin’s recommendations will institutionalize climate risk tracking into NetApp’s enterprise risk management system, improve disclosures ratings through targeted program and disclosure enhancements, and reduce manual workload by automating customer sustainability responses. The Climate Risk Assessment provides foundational insights for mitigation planning, while the Ratings roadmap supports strategic alignment through FY 28. The AI chatbot tool will streamline sales support and improve customer engagement. Together, these initiatives position NetApp to meet evolving sustainability standards and stakeholder demands.
