Jaymie Scotto Cutaia and the story at the other end of the cable

At Telx, Jaymie Scotto Cutaia had people patiently explaining the layers of the OSI stack to her. It was a useful education for a former television news producer: a whole world of networks, facilities and commercial relationships sitting behind the apparently simple act of communicating. She called it “telecom 101.” Somewhere inside that lesson was the business she would build.

The internet is unusually good at concealing its own machinery. A message arrives; a video plays; someone complains that the cloud is slow. Down below the metaphors, there are cables and buildings and people making decisions. Cutaia became interested in those people, and in the difficulty of explaining what they did. A cross-connect has many virtues. Making lively dinner conversation is rarely its first.

In 2005, she founded Jaymie Scotto & Associates, usually called JSA, with a focus on telecom. Twenty years later, that focus has carried her into data centers, sustainability publishing, executive interviews and debates about how infrastructure companies relate to their neighbors. The connecting thread is a writer’s question: who needs to understand this, and how do you get them interested?

The reporter follows the wire

Her preparation combined literature with live news. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Tufts, graduating cum laude with highest thesis honors, and an MFA in writing at New York University. Before becoming a communications executive, she worked as a news producer at MSNBC. Her newsroom experience included contributing to the network’s Emmy Award-winning coverage of the September 11 attacks.

She carried a specific lesson into business: “MSNBC taught me the importance of letting accurate data drive the story.” Speed mattered, but the facts still had to survive the trip. That is a demanding inheritance for a marketer. The temptation to describe tomorrow’s product as though it were already on the shelf is considerable; her stated approach separated available services from future plans.

Telx gave her the technical subject matter. As director of marketing and public relations, she worked among colocation and interconnection businesses and their customers. The relationships mattered as much as the terminology. People willing to teach a newcomer how the network fitted together also showed her the value of knowing an industry closely.

JSA grew out of that familiarity. Its proposition depended on staying with a specialized subject long enough to understand the companies, the questions and the people asking them. The agency would later work across a broader digital infrastructure market, but the original choice was narrow and deliberate. There was plenty to explain at the other end of the cable.

Make somewhere for the story to go

An agency can pitch an interview. It can also build a place to conduct one. Cutaia launched JSA TV in 2012, giving the industry a dedicated video channel for executive conversations, company announcements and event coverage. The familiar newsroom format had followed her into a business whose inner workings were often difficult for outsiders to picture.

Her work on Hibernia Express supplied a particularly visible subject. JSA helped communicate the transatlantic cable project, using drone footage of cable landings on both sides of the ocean. The physical arrival gave an infrastructure story something an audience could see. For a business built around explaining connections, a cable coming ashore was obligingly literal.

Audio opened another route. In November 2020, she and Evan Kirstel launched Data Movers, a podcast concerned with the people behind telecom and data center businesses. The opening lineup included GlobeNet’s Erick Contag, Salute Mission Critical’s Lee Kirby and DataBank’s Raul Martynek. The premise allowed room for career paths and personal motivations alongside industry developments.

That curiosity shows up in her conversations on camera, too. A 2023 JSA TV interview with Cologix’s Callum Morrison explored AWS Outposts in Vancouver data centers. Cutaia asked about the practical value for customers, then about which industries might adopt it. It is the useful rhythm of an explanation: establish what something does before asking the audience to care about its future.

“We are writers first here at JSA.”

Jaymie Scotto Cutaia, 2020

Her writing has also covered the mechanics of marketing. Forbes Agency Council articles under her name examine attribution, brand positioning and the value of business ecosystems. The topics are less glamorous than a cable landing, but they return to a practical concern: how to connect a communications effort to a business purpose. Even a good story has to earn its place in the budget.

A microphone needs a guest list

Once you build places for people to speak, the guest list becomes part of the work. In 2018, Cutaia spearheaded JSA’s Women’s Speaking Initiative, inviting women executives in telecom and technology to put themselves forward for industry speaking opportunities. It addressed a visible problem with a mechanism an event producer could actually use.

Women could submit professional profiles and preferred subjects. JSA would distribute the information to industry producers for consideration. The approach reduced the distance between someone qualified to speak and someone responsible for filling a program. There is a certain pleasure in answering a vague shortage of candidates with a specific list of names.

She took that concern onto conference stages herself. In 2019, she was announced as moderator of a diversity and inclusion panel at Capacity Media’s inaugural Global Women in Telco & Tech event in London. In 2022, her Platform Congress schedule in Antibes included both a Women in Finance & Tech roundtable and a session about data center carbon reduction. Representation and infrastructure were sharing her calendar.

The book that kept adding chairs

Greener Data brought another set of people into the conversation. The first book appeared on Earth Day 2022 with 24 contributors from the data center and network infrastructure world. Cutaia wanted the industry to share practical approaches to reducing its environmental footprint. A multi-author book gave those approaches a common address.

Her explanation of JSA’s work that year was strikingly procedural. Start with a workshop. Listen to stakeholders. Examine the messaging. Establish measures of success. Then make a communications plan. In discussing sustainability, she similarly emphasized better information, monitoring and accountability. The attraction of Greener Data was that people working on related problems could compare what they knew.

Volume Two arrived on Earth Day 2024, with more than 50 experts and nearly 600 pages. It organized its discussion around measurement, energy, power and cooling, and the financial and social benefits of greener operations. The book was becoming a meeting place for disciplines that share a facility but do not necessarily share a vocabulary.

At International Telecoms Week that May, the Greener Data Exchange took the discussion out of the book. Cutaia joined a sustainability panel with participants from companies including Bloom Energy, Schneider Electric and CleanArc Data Centers, alongside Infrastructure Masons founder Dean Nelson. A terrace reception followed. Even serious infrastructure people eventually deserve a change of scenery.

Volume Three followed on April 22, 2026, with more than 75 global experts. Its subjects included AI’s environmental impact, power and cooling technologies, and collaborative responses to sustainability challenges. Courtney Burrows served as publisher. The sequence tells a modest but concrete story about Cutaia’s method: find people with relevant knowledge, give them a format, and keep the discussion going.

A portion of the third volume’s proceeds was designated for Télécoms Sans Frontières, the emergency telecommunications organization for which she serves as an ambassador. In May 2026, she was also listed as moderator of an iMasons Climate Accord discussion called Greener Data: A Blueprint for Action. The book had acquired a continuing calendar.

A letter with a reader in mind

For all the distribution channels, one of Cutaia’s more revealing writing choices involved an audience of one. Her chapter in the 2021 collection The X Factor: The Spiritual Secrets Behind Successful Executives & Entrepreneurs took the form of a letter to her daughter, Ava Capri. Addressing Ava helped her quiet the imagined critics and her own critical voice.

She had already introduced readers to this family perspective in her personal “Ava Ramblings” blog. Alongside gratitude for her husband Rory and her colleagues, she noted that many team members had stayed with JSA for twelve years or more. Then came a joke about her daughter’s eventual internship: Mama already had filing waiting. The agency founder was thinking ahead.

The letter made space for a different kind of ambition: passing on the practices and values she hoped would help her daughter. Her earlier volunteer commitments, including board service with the American Shakespeare Center and Friends of the Augusta County Library, also put books and storytelling in the picture beyond the agency. Writing remained something she did for people, as well as for companies.

The audience beyond the fence

In September 2026, Cutaia appeared in The Tech Capital’s Women 100. Her recent public commentary has turned toward community engagement around data center development: understanding local stakeholders, listening early and communicating before a project reaches a moment of public friction. The people outside the industry have questions of their own.

That is a fitting next assignment for someone whose career began by learning what lay behind a connection. A resident, a school, a local official and an infrastructure executive may look at the same building and see different things. The useful conversation starts by finding out what each needs to know. Cutaia has spent two decades making places for such conversations. There is another audience waiting.