Tracey Franklin is the chief human resources officer at Moderna.
At age 39 and just one year into her role as chief human resources officer at Moderna, Tracey Franklin was faced with an immense professional challenge – guiding the biotech company and its employees through a global pandemic while supporting them as they rapidly developed a Covid-19 vaccine. When she first joined Moderna, which was founded in 2010, it was truly a startup with just 800 employees and no commercial products. Yet the company experienced explosive growth, became a household name, and was thrust into the global spotlight with the vaccine’s release.
Franklin had to throw out the traditional leadership playbook and adapt her management style to meet the real-time, specific needs of her organization. Over the past two years, she has spearheaded talent management and organizational strategy at Moderna, helping the company triple in size to over 3,000 employees amid the disruption of the pandemic.
“As the head of HR at Moderna, I go beyond the traditional roles – building the team, supporting our people, and growing a best-in-class benefits program, which are all critically important – to taking a significant role in shaping the business,” Franklin says. “I have a true sense of ownership across all aspects of our business, which is centered on positively impacting the health of people and patients around the world.”
With its mRNA science, Moderna sprinted to bring its first commercial product—a Covid-19 vaccine—to market in record time. Today, the employees continue to work relentlessly on advancing a pipeline of 46 vaccine and therapeutic development programs to address a wide variety of health conditions.
Franklin attributes their success to the Moderna Mindsets. “Digging one level deeper than our mission and values, this set of 12 cultural principles – such as ‘we pivot fearlessly’ and ‘we obsess over learning’ – codifies ways of working, which we encourage every employee to adopt,” she explains. “The Mindsets are integrated throughout the employee lifecycle, helping us hire, develop, and motivate our people and grounding them in our culture.”
Franklin is passionate about helping employees advance their careers while raising children.
Prior to joining Moderna, Franklin spent 15 years in HR at Merck pharmaceuticals, rotating through many different roles both within the U.S. and internationally. She was grateful to get to sit with company leaders when she was only in her twenties. But for obvious reasons, her experience at Moderna stands out in her career as particularly meaningful.
“As a group, we were thrust into the international spotlight with no notice,” says Franklin. “Our team’s deep sense of responsibility and determination to drive the development of a life-saving vaccine was beyond impressive. One of the greatest rewards of my role is working side-by-side with these remarkable people every day.”
Franklin is especially passionate about accelerating the careers of young female professionals who want to create a career and a family life. She has built her own career while raising two young children. “Women often seek a perfect time to have kids, worrying about their careers. I love sharing my personal story about how I navigated (sometimes not so well!) working and living in multiple countries around the world with two tiny kids to give our employees inspiration and confidence,” she says.
To those looking to tap into their life purpose, Franklin points out that your purpose is not always so much discovered as it is built. “Saying yes more often than no makes all the difference. When I was advised to stick it out in an entry-level job I didn’t love, I wanted to say no. But saying yes opened more doors than I could ever have imagined. I’d advise young people to take advantage of all the opportunities they are offered, even when the end result isn’t clear.”
