Who is Alexis Bateman, AWS's Head of Global Sustainability?

Amazon Web Services has promoted Dr Alexis Bateman to Head of Global Sustainability, in what is an expansion of her role with the cloud computing giant.

Alexis, who began her career with AWS in 2021 as Principal Product Manager, is an expert in the field of sustainability, having studied and researched sustainability science at institutions including MIT and the University of California.

With a resume that also includes positions at Nike and Open Supply Hub, Alexis brings with her an invaluable combination of academic rigor and industry expertise.

Her most recent role with the firm was as Head of Sustainability and so her new purview will be much the same, though on a larger scale.

Why sustainability leadership matters for AWS

The announcement comes at a time when AWS is chasing a series of ambitious environmental goals, including net zero carbon by 2040 and water positivity by 2030.

As such, sustainability has become central to AWS's business strategy, especially as the company expands while attempting to decarbonise.

The company now operates millions of servers across data centres worldwide, making energy efficiency and environmental impact larger concerns than ever.

With such a huge client base and network of infrastructure, the stakes are clearly very high, though AWS is rising to meet the technical challenge. Research shows that AWS infrastructure is up to 4.1 times more energy efficient than typical on-premises data centres. 

As part of Amazon's broader Climate Pledge, AWS is working toward net zero carbon across operations by 2040, ten years ahead of the deadline laid out in the Paris Agreement.

A career built on supply chain sustainability

Before joining AWS, Alexis had established herself as a leading voice in the field of supply chain sustainability, thanks mainly to her work at MIT, where she is still a visiting lecturer.

As Director of MIT Sustainable Supply Chains, she created programmes that have reached hundreds of thousands of supply chain professionals around the world through the MITx MicroMasters initiative.

In terms of her pen-to-paper research, Alexis' academic work helped to break new ground in understanding how companies approach sustainability.

She led the annual State of Supply Chain Sustainability Report at the university, revealing that nearly half of supply chain professionals were either primary decision-makers or directly involved in sustainability initiatives.

Alexis has published work in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Sloan Management Review and many other places.

She also co-authored chapters in the Handbook of Business and Climate Change, where she argued that transparency is fundamental to achieving ambitious climate targets.

What are the priorities for the future at AWS?

In her expanded role, Alexis is likely to continue with her focus on carbon accounting and transparency, as well as more practical, boots-on-the-ground sustainability initiatives.

With AWS's Customer Carbon Footprint Tool, which she has championed, customers are able to visualise their historical emissions and see estimates of how many emissions they have avoided by using AWS.

This addresses growing stakeholder demands for granular carbon data.

Water stewardship will be another priority going forward. AWS has committed to being water positive by 2030, meaning it will return more water to communities than it uses in direct operations.

The company has already achieved a 40% improvement in water usage effectiveness since 2021.

Elsewhere, AWS's Scope 3 emissions represent the largest chunk of its overall carbon footprint.