Tracey Franklin

Tracey Franklin joined Moderna in 2019, when the company employed 800 people in Massachusetts. Six years later it counts 5,000 worldwide and $3.2 billion in revenue, and her title is Chief People and Digital Technology Officer: HR and IT merged into one department, People and Digital Technology.

Franklin told UNLEASH in June 2025 that the merger was "a deliberate move to close the gap between the people who shape culture and those who build the systems that support it". What changed underneath is the unit of planning. Where IT planned technology and HR planned workforce separately, Moderna plans work: start from what it is trying to accomplish, then derive the technology and the human capabilities that fit. Her phrase for this is "architect the flow of work". She calls the model separating talent and technology "increasingly outdated", while cautioning that the merger suits only organizations with a solid foundation and a serious commitment.

The AI substrate is concrete: Moderna's OpenAI partnership has produced more than 3,000 custom GPTs, four times the 750 documented a year earlier. On the HR side, an Ask HR GPT acts as a front door, routing questions to specialized GPTs and feeding a policy improvement loop. Franklin stays measured on agents, tying their success to data, governance and change foundations.

Josh Bersin's October 2025 survey of CHROs leading AI transformation credits her with having "pioneered the adoption of AI throughout all HR and management". Her 2030 target is an adaptive organization under a systems view that counts humans and AI agents side by side.