Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. Thank you. I’m excited. [00:03:02]

Simon Mainwaring:
And so for of who aren’t in your sort of biotech space, help us understand what a company like modern does you’re based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but give us a sense of where you begin. And [00:03:13]

Tracy Franklin:
yeah, so we are really a pretty unique biotech. [00:03:17] And so we are a platform based company on mRNA science. And so we are trying to kind of forge a new modality in the world around how we can help people through medicine in a different [00:03:28]

Simon Mainwaring:
way. , mRNA is one of those terms that I think we’ve seen on the news, we’ve all heard about because we’ve all been through the pandemic together that is for messenger and RNA. [00:03:38] So what, what is messenger RNA in terms of proteins and what it allows us to do in terms of vaccines and so on? [00:03:45]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. So messenger RNA in, in the simplest way that I kind of describe it is it’s your body really helping to, , cure itself, right? And so there’s messages in each of your proteins in each of your cells. [00:03:57] And it’s just a natural way for us to go and communicate and, and start to send different messages out for your body to heal itself. [00:04:04]

Simon Mainwaring:
And the thing I’ve been waiting to ask you, you know, cause we’ve all been through such, you know, difficult times ups and down peculiar to all of our different circumstances and , the challenges of the pandemic. [00:04:15] How has it been inside Moderna over the last couple of years? And I, I don’t mean that in a funny way. I mean, is it, is it stressful? Is it ups and downs? Is it just one relentless breathless effort? What’s it been. [00:04:27]

Tracy Franklin:
Uh, it’s been awesome. So just first and foremost, absolutely awesome. And some incredible company. [00:04:33] I, I often say to people, it almost feels like, like, think about the best project team you’ve ever worked on, where it was like a gnarly problem, super hard. All of your colleagues in a room, like your sleeves rolled up to your shoulders, just like working an intense problem. It’s been like that for the last two and a half years. [00:04:52] Right. So just super [00:04:53]

Simon Mainwaring:
cool. I mean, it does feel, feel like sort of the 18 coming together with the most pressing VO problem. And there could not be anything that kind of elevates you or gets you on point, , more effectively, but you’ve also had to do with incredible growth. Right. As I understand it, you’ve gone from like 700 employees to 3000 in the last two years. [00:05:11] Yeah. And you are in charge of human resources. how was, how was that? [00:05:16]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. So it was super interesting when I joined the company. So I joined pre COVID. , and so we were essentially a clinical biotech company. So doing, you know, clinical trials, early stage rapidly moving to late stage for a product. We thought we were gonna launch earliest three years. [00:05:33] Right? So over the last two years, we’ve had to almost panic, urgent build right to stand functions up that never existed before. So we did not at the time that I joined at the time of COVID have capability in house to actually walk a product out the door and get it into patients arms. And so we have been hiring building functions, building technology, you know, to, to do that. [00:05:57]

Simon Mainwaring:
And, you know, let’s push in on that a little bit because I mean, it’s one thing for an entrepreneur or a startup to have some sort of market traction and go to scale when you wanna bring your purpose to life. It’s another to have a life threatening global pandemic where you’ve got, you know, take product to market. [00:06:13] What’s that process like, particularly when you’ve got so many, you know, it’s so highly regulated and the clinical trials are so rigorous and so on. How do you stand up a capacity like that, that you didn’t have before in a very short timeline? [00:06:25]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah, so it was an interesting time in the world and like we had, and I wanna say kudos to all of our partners that we worked with, whether it was the regulators or contract manufacturing. [00:06:35] , we worked with so many partners, , to help us do that, but it was essentially pretty unique, like to have an emergency use authorization vaccine was not something that we had had seen before and had to do before. So it was new for all of us. , but we wanted to make sure that we. Had, you know, the best vaccine that we could make, you know, that applied to the most demographics that we could. [00:06:58] Cause that was very important to us from a diversity perspective. , and so that’s how we kind of set up and, and pushed through, you know, building that. [00:07:06]

Simon Mainwaring:
And let me ask you this. , I deeply believe that we all need to work together in new ways and, and the, the vaccine rollout was a powerful example of that because we’ve got the climate emergency loss of biodiversity plastics in the ocean. [00:07:17] So many other things, you know, soil degradation, , but we’re not gonna solve for these issues unless we work together in new ways. And I think big pharma and, you know, the regulators demonstrated powerful collaboration that what typically it would take a vaccine up to 10 years plus to get to market. [00:07:32] But here we were like 11 months. How did that happen? What was that process like? And how was that driven? Where did that come from? Where did that momentum, where did that sort of almost pre-competitive collaboration mindset come from. [00:07:47]

Tracy Franklin:
So interesting. It came from a lot of places to be totally honest. And when you think about, there was a couple of factors, one, our ability to, , produce vaccine is faster because of the platform. [00:07:57] So it’s not traditional methods that tend to take longer and our ability to manufacture us faster. So some of that was in, within us and our technology, some of that was in the regulators. And so there were no corners cut at all in terms of quality in terms of, , safety. But some of the, this is probably not the right word, but like bureaucracy was cut down. [00:08:19] Like, so people were moving at a pace that they hadn’t moved before. And to be totally honest, you know, right or wrong, people were working 24 7, whether it was a regulators, whether it was our company, you know, to make sure that we could move this stuff forward. And so it was a combination of thinking about doing things a little bit differently, , and cutting out the fluff in the system. [00:08:37]

Simon Mainwaring:
And I would love to understand how that conversation goes because there’s probably no industry, more competitive than big pharma out there in a way. And yet you’ve gotta have these conversations with the stakes, such as they are to say, Hey, let’s work together in unprecedented ways. So because any company out there right now, they have to provide systemic solutions industrywide solutions because if only one company doesn’t and everyone else doesn’t, you’re gonna undo your good work. [00:09:03] So how do those conversations go? Is it just sort of, Hey, let’s convene the industry. Let’s let’s nominate what our priorities are, what our goals are and then how can we work together toward what does it look like? Yeah. [00:09:15]

Tracy Franklin:
So to be honest, operation warp speed really helped us a lot in terms of pulling together all the key constituents that we needed to have to say, okay, everybody come together, sit around a table and figure out how we’re actually gonna move the ball down the court the way we need to. [00:09:30] , so that was kind of one enabling, , kind of mechanism for us. But typically we do have, you know, pharma, biotech, round tables, where CEOs get together and we do talk about, you know, I’m not in those meetings, but I know they do talk about really, , intense problems that are, that are happening around the world and how can we come together and figure out how to start to solve some of those. [00:09:49] So as, as competitive, as you know, any company can be that the collaboration is hugely important. [00:09:55]

Simon Mainwaring:
And I think this is attention. This competition and collaboration is gonna be attention for every industry moving forward. , how do you resolve the issue of who gets the credit. because sometimes when we’re talking to companies or you’re hearing sort of industry conferences and events and it’s all about, well, we could collaborate. [00:10:09] Who’s gonna go first and who did what and so on, but we’re gonna have to sort of resolve that on ongoing basis. How do you throttle between competition and collaboration? [00:10:19]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah, for us, it’s all about the patients, right. Or the people who need the medicine. And so how can you get to that? The most efficient way is, is where our Northstar, you know, we partner with the NIH, we partnered with, you know, other companies to be able to get us to, to, to patients fast. [00:10:34] , and I think that’s, that’s most important to us in the decision making process, not necessarily kind of who gets credit for [00:10:41] it. [00:10:41]

Simon Mainwaring:
So, so yeah, you have to really kind of keep your eye on what is the most important wise. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I wanna, I wanna shift to your internal stakeholders because I mean, you’re overseeing this army of experts, I think almost half your company as PhDs. [00:10:54] And we saw with medical practitioners and first responders, how exhausted they were. We viscerally saw it on television, on news every night and behind the scenes, you’ve got your teams absolutely. Kind of working around the clock. A how do you provide the capacity of people that you need, but also then how do you manage them through that? [00:11:13] How do you make sure that they can keep going, give us a sense of how you keep your culture thriving so you can rise to the moment. [00:11:19]

Tracy Franklin:
When COVID hit, it was a wild time, , for all of us, right? No one knew what was gonna happen in the world. And we were in a position where, when we realized that we believed our platform could help. We knew we should help. , and it was crazy if you think about it, can, you know, when you think about the size of the company that we were, we hadn’t commercialized a product before we hadn’t proved the platform. [00:11:42] We didn’t know what was gonna happen with the pandemic competition, things of that nature. , and, but we locked arms and said, let’s go forward, but we know it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be tough because you know, of our size and because of the ambition of what was ahead of us, , that coupled with, , people were scared, they were gonna die. [00:11:59] You know, this was back when we were washing our groceries when they were delivered. [00:12:02]

Simon Mainwaring:
Right. I remember washing, washing every item coming out as if it was contaminated, like a live [00:12:08]

Tracy Franklin:
Renee, you know? Exactly. And here, here we are here. I am. I need us to come to work. I need us to come to work and I need to stand side by side very closely and manufacture a vaccine and, and do research. [00:12:21] Right. And our employees, I think the good news is we have such amazing mission based employees that, of course they wanted to help. And it was a bit of a way to get us through it because a lot of people were locked in their homes, but here we were, we at least had a mission to, to do things, but that did not come without serious stress, you know, both from a work perspective, but then also how do people manage their families during those periods of time and inputting themselves in situations where they could get COVID when we didn’t know what was happening. [00:12:53] So from a company perspective, we did everything that we could to kind of. Anything that we could around the employees when they were going through that process. So whether it was, we did like popup childcare on site when all the childcares had closed, you know, we eventually in introduced testing before testing was a big thing, but then we also, you know, had care packages sent home and did concierge things for our employees to make sure that the family was, , getting taken care of. [00:13:18] And so I think the emotional strain was real. , but the belief that we could save so many lives was something that kind of kept everybody going on an ongoing basis. [00:13:31]

Simon Mainwaring:
Yeah. That higher order kind of purpose transcends. Yeah. Kind of what you’re feeling in the moment. Yeah. You mentioned your so mission driven. [00:13:37] Can you speak to what the mission of Moderna is? But then also I was, you know, looking at your website and so on. You’ve got fascinating things on there. Like the 14 mindsets. Of Moderna. Yeah. That kind of, you speak to us about how you actually craft what the mindset should be inside the company and how that informs people’s daily roles. [00:13:55] So what’s the per what’s the mission. And then talk about the mindsets. [00:13:58]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. Our mission is to bring mRNA technology to medicine, right. And to be able to help so many more patients in a different kind of way across the therapeutic area. Like when I joined, we weren’t working on vaccines, that was not that wasn’t something were necess necessarily like doubling down on. [00:14:15] We were focused on rare disease and oncology. So the mission is in a broad sense across, you know, therapeutic area, across modality to bring medicine to patients or people in terms of vaccines, , what had happened during the pandemic in terms of like how we grew. So, as I mentioned before, we were standing up functions that hadn’t existed before, and we were hiring leaders in and. [00:14:38] we had to do so with such haste that our typical onboarding processes and maybe the way we hired and how we would put people in stretch assignments and do things differently prior to the pandemic, we had to kind of, , suspend some of those in terms of getting people in the role, the right people in the job and moving forward. [00:14:56] And so what we realized about a year into the pandemic, Stefan and I were kind of sitting here and we were like, oh my gosh, like we, it’s almost like we did a merger integration, like a really difficult one, cuz we had, you know, the legacy Moderna 800 or so people. And now we’ve grown up to 2000, all people from different companies with different agendas, you know, in terms of how to behave at a company. [00:15:21] , and what was important to them, some were passive, some were aggressive, some were risk adverse, like, you know, and so we started to say like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we’re losing ourselves as part of this process. And so we need to crystallize it into the 12 mindsets we need to crystallize. What it means to be successful at Moderna. [00:15:37] , and so literally like write the recipe down and be really clear for people like this is what good looks like in terms of achieving, , the mission. [00:15:45]

Simon Mainwaring:
And was that a collaborative process? Because we find in our work at, we first, the more that, , all stakeholders inside your company, co-create, you know, an output like mindsets, the more they buy into it, or is it something where leadership had to say, Hey, based on where we were with our 800 employees, here’s what we kind of want to institutionalize. [00:16:04] What was it like? [00:16:05]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah, what we did was actually go to like the 15 or 20 culture carriers who had. Grown up at the company. The company was eight years old, right? When the pandemic was heading eight, nine years old. , so not old. Um, but who were the people who, who knew what the company stood for before the pandemic and actually went through pretty , exhaustive process with them to try to feed out like what has made the darnest successful? [00:16:29] , cuz I truly, truly believe the culture of the company is why we were successful in the pandemic. It was the way we operated our beliefs, enabled us to lean into that super ambiguous, very scary. You know, let’s launch our first product on a global stage. Why [00:16:46]

Simon Mainwaring:
not? What could with, with life or dead stake, you know, life best stage. [00:16:49] Yeah, [00:16:50]

Tracy Franklin:
yeah. You know, but we ended up being a little bit broader about it, but then at the end of the day, sat with Stefan, the CEO, Steve, and the president of the company. And we just like really refined what we heard and crystallized those and rolled them out. [00:17:05]

Simon Mainwaring:
And help us understand how you. [00:17:08] Institutionalized that culture above and beyond the mindsets, because it’s one thing to launch something in a moment of crises, but you gotta keep that balloon in the air. Are there rituals, are there traditions, are there signage inside the office? How do you onboard people? Do you celebrate stories of people who are , acting in alignment with the mission? [00:17:24] What is the meat and potatoes of maintaining culture? What does that [00:17:28]

Tracy Franklin:
look. , so we do a lot of that. So we have, , we do pretty extensive onboarding. It’s always been that way. It was like that before the pandemic, where we actually talk people through with stories, what it’s like to work here, why we make the decisions that we make, cuz we truly are building a, a different kind of company. [00:17:44] And so you need to understand that we, it actually starts before onboarding in the recruiting process. So we wanna make sure that we see a lot of really, really talented people, , but you have to want to work here. You have to want to be in this environment. And so we’re very transparent about what it is like to work here before you even get onboarded. [00:18:02] We continue the process through the onboarding. When we rolled out those, those 12 mindsets, we put the entire global company through, , , a day of immersion around , what the mindsets meant, stories, things of that nature. , and then what we’ve since done is all of our senior leaders. So our vice presidents and above. [00:18:20] We’ve had them go through an assessment and assign them a coach. And so we’ve got the EC members with the senior leaders, really working through, , strengths and stretches when it comes to the mindsets and how we’re moving forward. So we’ve got a lot, lot of things happening. I could probably talk about it for a while if you wanna keep talking about it, but we do a lot of cool stuff. [00:18:37] around them. [00:18:38]

Simon Mainwaring:
It’s very cool. And I love strengths and stretches is actually what we use at we first, when we have our weekly meetings where everyone says like what’s working well for you, what’s not. So I love that. And, uh, you’ve effectively also had to rapid prototype the onboarding process. [00:18:52] And there’s a lot of purposeful companies that are solving for hugely consequential issues, which are sort of rising exponentially in terms of their impact. So that they’ve gotta scale up quickly. What does it look like to on, you know, you’ve gotta be like, Hey, welcome to Moderna get to work. [00:19:06] Like, how did you, how do you do that? How do you do it more quickly if you’re in a hypergrowth phase? [00:19:10]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah, I think the interesting piece is there’s so much onboarding that happens. On the job. Right. So I always say to people, you know, within the first couple of weeks, you’re gonna go through your holy crap moment and they say differently sometimes, but you go through your holy crap moment, like, right, right. [00:19:25]

Simon Mainwaring:
Oh, I think we’ve, I think we’ve said worse in the last couple of years. That’s the polite way of putting it. [00:19:30]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. I big polite. Um, but, but everybody goes through it because. It’s one thing to, , think, you know what you’re joining, but then when you actually walk in the door and be like, wow, a build is, , hard to do. [00:19:42] Normally let a load a build at this pace with the ambition that we have, because we set , crazy goals like we’re, we’re not interested in being an average version of ourselves. We wanna be the best version. And so our belief is like, shoot for the moon. If you fall a little short of it, it’s better than setting kind of average mediocre targets. [00:19:59] And so that is an adjustment for people who come from potentially big pharma companies, a very safe environment. Um, and so they have to go through a bit of this, like, whoa, you know, you move fast. And I think from an onboarding perspective, because you’re right in it and we have a leadership philosophy at the EC, that is you roll you, roll up your sleeves to your arms, right. [00:20:19] All way up to your shoulders. And so there’s so much EC exposure and involvement and problem solving that that onboarding happens. Pretty quickly because you see, you know, philosophically how we work right up at the core. Right. [00:20:33]

Simon Mainwaring:
I love that. Rolling up your sleeves , to your shoulders. And, um, because the degree of difficulty wasn’t high enough already, , you know, historic global pandemic and life or death, , stakes, you also had a very polarized nation and, you know, countries all around the world around vaccines and, , people’s right to self-determination in terms of their health and, and privacy and all of these different issues. [00:20:54] heard of protests, I’ve heard of different things. What was it like actually at the office environment? How did that affect employees and then how do you manage for that? [00:21:03]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah, that’s something that we didn’t necessarily anticipate even just going back to such public attention. [00:21:11] And so here we were, uh, Massachusetts based biotech company, only known in the circles that we were in and overnight turned into like. A global phenomenon. And so you can imagine like your grandmother, your friends, your neighbors, what does the Tracy [00:21:30]

Simon Mainwaring:
does again? What did you say [00:21:31]

Tracy Franklin:
she does again? What do you do? [00:21:33] And they’re talking to you about vaccine advocacy and you’re like, nobody ever knew about this stuff before. Right? And so it was interesting cuz we had to help employees through that and let’s be honest, like there were good news cycles and there were bad news cycles. It seemed like for everyone, good one, we had a bad one. [00:21:49] It was like, oh, that company’s crazy. They’re never gonna be able to do it. Is it safe? Is it not safe? You know, it was to your point, very polarizing. So we learned very quickly that like transparent, fast communication with our employees was necessary. We never asked them to be, , an advocate or, or to go out and proactively communicate. [00:22:06] But we felt like we needed to the truth, , around, you know, what was happening. And so we, we did those, those quick spot, , communications. It also got pretty difficult from a, , political sense. Right. And so there were many, many days where outside of our offices, we had extreme groups either right. Or left or whoever outside, , chanting, , either, , concerns around the safety of our vaccine, particularly when the mandates got, , imposed, there was a lot of activity outside of our office or when there was some probably not so truthful information, the news around our ability to supply around the globe and our willingness to supply around the globe. [00:22:48] , and so, , yes, there was some noise and some, some, some very interesting protests that were happening, lots of caricatures and things of that nature. [00:22:57]

Simon Mainwaring:
Well, let me ask also internally, , everyone who works there, especially, you know, during the, the context of the, the pandemic have self-selected that they care about what you’re doing. [00:23:06] Mm-hmm , but even within that narrow band of people, there’s always a spectrum of points of view. Like, oh, we care about this, but we wish you hadn’t spoken about it this way. Or, you know, I’m conflicted about some of the issues, you know, that are relevant to what was the vaccines being rolled out? How did you manage the internal culture? [00:23:24] Because I imagine the last thing you wanted is strife inside Moderna out there, or, you know, internal revolt or toxic culture, or any of those sorts of things. Like when there’s such a high demand for hard work, such a condensed timeline, such a mission critical kind of focus, but then you’ve got this kind of, you know, human element as well. [00:23:44] How do you manage. [00:23:46]

Tracy Franklin:
So we try to stay very truthful and very factual. We’re open honest communications kind of orientated company. , and so that’s how we lead from a north star perspective. My role is to make sure that people feel like where they come to work is a safe environment where they can be themselves and where they belong. [00:24:09] Right. And so what we try to do, cuz there was a, there’s a lot happening in the world out there a lot. Right? So every time there’s a big event happening, we try to give employees the resources that they need. , . We have people on site counselors to talk to people about whatever issues that they were struggling with. [00:24:24] And so, so I, and we try to provide the support and the outlet through, you know, whatever means that might be through benefits and services that we have for people to have those kind of conversations that might, they might need. But from a, from a company perspective, we put, we put out the facts. If it’s a decision we made, we put out the facts and communicate around what’s what’s happening. [00:24:44] Um, yeah. [00:24:46]

Simon Mainwaring:
And that’s all you can do. I mean, , have you found that in that unique triage situation of the last couple of years, you had to spin up, , the counseling and all these other areas, mm-hmm are there lessons within that kind of expression of company culture that you wanna take forward, where you go, wow. [00:25:01] In these circumstances, we leveled this up, but we see what a difference it makes outright. And we wish you’d known that before, or this is something we should carry forward. [00:25:09]

Tracy Franklin:
So I think one of the real things that we’re working through , is our employees. And this isn’t just ours. This is employees everywhere. [00:25:16] Want companies to take a strong stance on whether they’re political topics or, , environmental topics or whatever they might be. They wanna understand where their employer stands on those topics. And so we are shifting slightly from just here’s the resources to be able to help you manage through horrific, , gun violence or whatever. [00:25:38] It might be externally Roe versus Wade, whatever the situation is, you know, here’s some resources to help through that and we care, and this is bad, , to, , starting to straddle the line around who we stand for as a company and the things that we will and won’t put up with, but that’s, I would say that’s a journey that we’re going through. [00:25:54]

Simon Mainwaring:
Yeah. I think every company now, I mean, when you think about president, Zelensky talking to the CEOs around the world about whether they’re operating their business in Russia, there’s, there’s no ceiling now to the role of purview of business. , at the same time, you know, you had all those internal challenges, but also you had an external dialogue that must have put pressure on people like, oh, big pharma just wants to get more needles in more arms with new vaccines for different variants and so on. [00:26:21] That puts pressure on people’s lives. , and at the same time you’re being charged with managing work life balance, the whole human being, you know, and they’re facing all this pressure and all these questions at home. How did you manage for their external life when they, you know, they’re many of them working remotely, obviously, but for the, the sort of life beyond the Moderna work, how did you sort of help them get through that? [00:26:42] Because all eyes were on them or all eyes were on you. [00:26:45]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. So I think it, in our case specifically around the vaccine, leading with the science and the facts is always really important. Right. And we’re about to launch this like myth MythBusters thing, because there’s so much myth out there to really give people, I think, to the point, you know, the facts that, and, and the, the talking points when they’re, nicely questioned at a company or at a family party. [00:27:06] Right. , but in terms of. Benefits that we’ve done. So I think it’s really important for us to make sure that we’re caring for the mental wellbeing and for the like kind of whole family. And so , we did everything from like virtual babysitter, you know, early in the pandemic to the com app we’ve concierge services. [00:27:25] , on site we’ve gave a Bena pass, which is just like, you can use it for any health and wellness. We’ve extended a ton of things for families, , to be able to participate in if they need services, , and healthcare. And then, so we’ve done. We have really amazing benefits, actually. We’ve doubled down in everything we’ve done from that perspective, but I think it really just comes back to, does my employer care about me and my family? [00:27:52] And we do. And we’re only 3000 people. I mean, it, on some days it’s wild that we’re 3000 people, , but when you. Look at like the size of companies, particularly who are trying to deliver the pipeline. We are, we have such an advantage because it is such a small connected community where we can just, you know, take people along with us on the journey. [00:28:11]

Simon Mainwaring:
One of the things I’m so mindful of during this period of hyper growth that you went through is the competition for the very same talent from, , competitors or from other industries and so on. [00:28:20] So how do you win the day? You know, is it a question of culture benefits? , who’s out the front in terms of technology, what did that look like? [00:28:29]

Tracy Franklin:
So I truly believe it was culture, right? So I, yes, we have an amazing platform and people wanna be part of a disruptive new technology. But I talked to hundreds of leaders. [00:28:41] I interviewed every senior leader in our entire company, so that the CEO and what people wanna be part of was really being able to challenge convention, do things differently, throw bold ideas out there, run at a fast pace. So, you know, what I found is a lot of people were starting to get a little bored in, in this big company environment. [00:29:02] , and to be part of something where they could just unleash and be who they were, , was super appealing. [00:29:09]

Simon Mainwaring:
And to your point about being connected, what does success look like for you? Because there’s the, the goal of getting the right vaccines into the greatest number of people to save the greatest number of lives, but in someone who’s in charge of HR in this exploding workforce, how do you measure success? [00:29:25] How do you benchmark, you know, for yourself? [00:29:28]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. So for me, I think we have such an unbelievable, unique opportunity, right? The visionary leadership we have is something I’ve never seen before. Right? Stefan from a CEO perspective is literally one of the most incredible people, super visionary, the EC, right? [00:29:45] So this big, bold mission to help so many lives. At the same time, like we essentially have a blank sheet of paper and I don’t mean that to be disrespectful for all the 3000 people in the countries who’ve stood up, but we are so early in our processes that we have this, , ability to truly build in an unconventional way and leapfrog, you know, to patients faster by using digital and AI. [00:30:07] And, , thinking about that social architecture and that infrastructure around what is the company you wanna try to build to help employees, to help patients. And we have some capital to do it and, and that’s not a normal situation. You don’t often get that opportunity. And so for me, it’s really how can I successfully build this organization in a unique way? [00:30:31] , because we are more like apple Google than we are a pharma company because of the platform. And so we have this, this ability to do something really cool. And so for me, being successful in that area is what’s super important to [00:30:42]

Simon Mainwaring:
me. One other area I’m fascinated in is, , you know, cross sector collaboration because all of these issues we’re solving for the pandemic being one of many, no one company’s gonna do it on their own. [00:30:52] No one industry, no one billionaire, you know, we’re all gonna have to work together in new ways to accelerate and scale our impact. So is there any guidance you can give us as to how you relate to, you know, partners like government agencies and policy makers and the NIH and so on to help facilitate. [00:31:10] This sort of rapid response and taking to scale, because this is the same, solution is gonna be required on a number of different fronts with the guys climate emergency, and more, so anything about how you all work together, cross sector. Yeah, [00:31:25]

Tracy Franklin:
I think it’s so we all, we work together so closely still now I think fatigue and burnout is a real thing. [00:31:32] And so I, my belief, my belief is everyone was heroic during the pandemic in terms of the collaboration, how we worked. Everyone is very tired now and they’re saying, okay, hold on. Like, this is not a sustainable pace. And so it’s starting to feel like, Hmm, you know, are we gonna have some slowing up a little bit? [00:31:52] Is it gonna start to change and go back to the way it was pre pandemic a little bit more. What we’re trying to do is, is let that natural kind of breath happen and then say, okay, how, what, what can we learn from what we went through? And then how can we recharge. whatever partner dynamic we’re talking about. [00:32:11] How can we think about recharging it again? One of the challenging things about our company is we are super bold, relentless, really ambitious move fast. Not all of our partners wanna do that, or can do that or capable of doing that. And so we ask everything of our partners. So for us to identify who the right partners are, is really important because they have to kind of be able to, or be willing to match the pace and boldness of our [00:32:37]

Simon Mainwaring:
culture. [00:32:38] And so how do you pre-qualify them? I love your answer because it doesn’t matter how lofty your goal is. If your, your partners aren’t aligned in terms of ambition and energy and all those sorts of things, no amount of wanting will make it. So, so whether they vet you or you vet them, how do you work that out? [00:32:55] Is it a, is it a conscious decision making filter you have? What does it look like? Yeah, [00:33:00]

Tracy Franklin:
I think, and we’ve learned along the way around who are the partners that are most flexible and who are willing to kind of sign up to the journey that we have and who might not be, um, it might not be as easy to, to work with, or just not willing to kind of push their organizations the same way that, that we push ours. [00:33:18] , so it’s not a, it’s not like we have a process that we go through, but it’s just more our leadership understanding and, and learning about other organizations and how they prioritize, what makes them tick and what they’re willing to do from a partner [00:33:29]

Simon Mainwaring:
perspective. I’m gonna ask a sort of oddly personal question in the sense that. [00:33:36] Firstly, I have, you all had a chance to exhale because on behalf of everyone listening to this, the work that you’ve done and the lives that it saved and the, the commitment that made it possible was so meaningful to so many lives. Literally. So have you had a moment to exhale, but also would you share, was there a high moment? [00:33:53] Not that anyone’s celebrating anything, but from a sort of scientific rigor and deployment point of view, was there a moment of sort of like, wow, this is amazing. We’re making a difference. And also was there a low moment? So have you had a moment to exhale and a high and a low [00:34:09]

Tracy Franklin:
to be truthful? I don’t think we’ve had a moment to exhale, right. [00:34:13] Because I think we, we are such a forward looking company, , and we have so much to build and so much to offer the world. , we do go at 110 miles an hour all the time. I would say when I remembered exhaling, the most was when the data came back saying our vaccine worked. It was like, I think we all held our breath for like 48, literally held our breath for like 48 hours when we knew the results were coming back. [00:34:37] And it was just like, oh my gosh, like our technology works and oh, it really works. It works super good. And we’re gonna be able to save so many lives. It was a huge exhale moment. We had a couple of, um, gatherings planned to, to celebrate. And every time I, every time I plan when a new variant comes. And so it’s a little bit of an inside joke that we have. [00:34:58] Um, couple, we try to formally plan something. It doesn’t work. , but so, so I think, , the truth is we’re all working really hard and it’s just part of our company culture and it’s what we’ve done pre pandemic. , and we’re all happy to, to be doing that, to, to save so many lives. I think a low moment, , For me, , and probably for the organization was when there were so much misinformation out there about our intentions for access to vaccines for low income nations, , and watching how the press does what the press does. [00:35:31] , was it always just, it, it almost felt like a, a like slightly helpless moment, cuz you’re like, that’s not at all accurate and you know, it, we know it and that’s just not fun and it, it’s not safe because then you’ve got protestors and you got, you know, misinformation out there and you know, a lot of things happening. [00:35:48] And so I, I would say that was probably the lowest moment. Um, but again, it’s a new cycle. We got the right information out [00:35:54]

Simon Mainwaring:
there. Right. You know, that is the nature of the media and clickbait and, you know, the, how they adrenalize our lives. You know, what’s also interesting is that despite how inherently purposeful, what you do is that doesn’t give you a free pass in terms of how you show up as a company and you’re in charge of HR. [00:36:10] So, you know, what are your, give us a sense of what you do to maintain commitments to diversity and inclusion and equity. Let’s start there. And then we can maybe look at sustainability and so on because you know, you’ve got the same expectations on you as anybody else. So what about D and I, how do you manage that in this sort of context? [00:36:26]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. So it was really interesting when I joined the company. , I was so impressed with the diversity, , that had already existed in, in the organization, both from a, from a demographics perspective, but also what it felt like from a cultural perspective. And so my view around DNIS, we actually do B D and I so starting with belonging because I believe that that’s the core of the base. [00:36:51] If you can get that right. And people feel like they belong and they can bring their authentic self to work and they can throw their crazy idea. I mean, we got, we have, you have to throw crazy ideas out here to do what you’re able to do. So we do have a very. Inclusive and belonging type culture. , and through the craziness of the pandemic, we actually stood up a whole bunch of employee resource groups, got those, you know, up and running and came up with a roadmap around DNI. [00:37:15] And so we’re progressing from a work, , perspective. We have a new recruiting system in, that’s gonna help us to identify, you know, talent and things of that. So it’s a huge priority for us. , and but one that feels natural in, in one that feels like, you know, we’re gonna be able to, to do great things in this [00:37:30]

Simon Mainwaring:
space, right. [00:37:31] And then obviously there’s an expectation and rising one on every company in terms of ESG commitments, environmental, social, and governance. And I know you’ve got your net zero carbon emissions goal for 2030, your got green transportation, your, your manufacturing facilities using 50% less water. Like how do you, , throttle on all of those cylinders and what are you doing in the sustainability area specifically to make sure that your company’s not just doing the right thing, it’s defensible in public. [00:37:58]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. So we truly wanna make the world a better. Truly right. And if you had time with Stefan, he would sit here and he goes to Davos and he comes back and he’s just like, oh, like there’s so much to do to make the world a better place. And although we are small and we are mighty, , and we have this huge agenda, like ESG and impact to world has to be one of the things that we’re focused on. [00:38:22] And just like any other goal that we put out there, we throw out pretty lofty goals in the, in the ESJ even the carbon neutral one, like it takes partnerships and it takes working with other people and changing regulatory things. And so, but we are committed to truly making an impact there. We put our first report out this year. [00:38:39] , and so it’s a, it’s a huge agenda for us. [00:38:42]

Simon Mainwaring:
And I know that your, you know, you mentioned earlier on, you know, the sort of bad or the ill informed press that was out there about the vaccines getting to yeah. You know, the underdeveloped world and so on. I know that you have clinical research, , centers in communities that have traditionally been underserved. [00:38:58] Why are you doing that? And, you know, are the disease, , issues even more acute there are they sort of underserved in any way in terms of their access to vaccines, proportionally, to, you know, other markets. [00:39:11]

Tracy Franklin:
, uh, I’ll just stay within lane. I can speak to in the, , in this question, we believe in making the best vaccines for different populations, right? [00:39:20] And our technology will be able to differentiate what goes into the vial, depending on, you know, the epidemiology and, and the markets that you’re in. And so we want to help people in the best way that we can help. And you have to do that in a dispersed way. , we have committed to, to Kenya in terms of building a facility there to make sure that you can get access. [00:39:42] , during pandemic. So we have manufacturing strategies around making sure that should another, you know, pandemic situation come up or, you know, , more, , localized, , epidemiology would dictate different things in the vial is what our strategy is. [00:39:57]

Simon Mainwaring:
Right. And understood. And, you know, there’s also the expectation. [00:40:01] I know that, uh, Moderna is now profitable and it took some time to get there, like a lot of companies that invest so heavily in R and D and so on. But when you do have a proportional sort of upside, you know, as a result of the pandemic and so on, you’ve seem to have been investing a lot back and through the foundation, , and to make contributions. [00:40:18] Could you get, there’s an expectation of that quite honestly, you know, because it’s a very profitable business to be in sadly these days, but you know what, what’s the foundation doing? [00:40:28]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah. So the foundation, , is amazing. We just stood it up. , and we’re really kind of defining what the strategy for the foundation should look like now. [00:40:36] But right now we are investing into areas that were hit hardest with COVID. So, you know, children who lost parents, um, or just underserved communities that may have been hit harder. And so we have a whole series of companies that we have invested with who are doing kind of great things. So that’s kinda stage one of the pin of the charitable work, our foundation work. [00:40:58]

Simon Mainwaring:
Yeah. I know. It’s really exciting defining that because I mean the needs of change so quickly over the last couple of years, and, and they’re informed by, you know, it’s almost like we’ve got back out of the future now rather than build on the past. , I have a question I’m, I’m not expecting you to have a crystal ball, but I feel like, , It’d be remiss mean not to ask this question. [00:41:15] I mean, we’ve got all the different variants, you know, we can almost mark our calendars by Omnichron or Delta over the last couple of years now, you know, there’s a dialogue around monkeypox and vaccine rollouts and those sorts of things. And it seems that, you know, viruses of different types and so on, , and pandemics are something that’s part of the, the modern mindset moving forward. [00:41:36] Can we be optimistic or is it going to be something that is just much like the flu we’re gonna have to live with? And it’s just gonna be part of our lives? Like how should we kind of compartmentalize the role of potential pandemics in our life now? [00:41:51]

Tracy Franklin:
Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I do know our technology has proved to be successful and rapidly responding. [00:41:58] And so should there be things that need to be rapidly responded to on, you know, in a significant way? I think we’re gonna be ready, willing, and able to help [00:42:07]

Simon Mainwaring:
, Despite all the demands on you and your entire team, you know, 3000 strong. Now over the last couple of years, how is everyone feeling? I mean, I, I, I want to point back to how deeply, profoundly appreciative everyone is of the role that companies like yours have played in literally saving so many lives. [00:42:25] what’s the temperature like in there? How is everyone feeling looking forward? Have they kind of have their shoulders dropped maybe one inch and they kinda occasionally laugh out loud, not just privately in the bathroom because that’s not appropriate anywhere else. Like, what’s it [00:42:36]

Tracy Franklin:
like? No. So the one good thing about our environment, it’s like a very authentic, transparent you are who you are here. [00:42:43] And so we have a lot of good laughs um, at the same time that we do a lot of hard work. Cause you, you just have to, when you’re working so closely with so many awesome people. And so I would say the environment is, , really excited. About what we’re building as a company. I think people are so, , interested to help in so many ways. [00:43:02] , and so I think there’s that optimism, , happening. I think people are tired and I think that that’s broad, broader outside of our company. Um, but I think people are, you know, tired to some degree. I think a lot of people got some rest over the summer, but they’re kind of clicking back to say, right? [00:43:16] Like, what’s the next chapter, like I said to you before you have to wanna work here. , and when you do, you really do right. And so I think it’s, it’s a super good [00:43:24]

Simon Mainwaring:
group of people. I love that you self in. Don’t be surprised. I wanna, I wanna ask your a piece of advice for all of us in your unique lens on this, cuz you’ve had the highest stakes life and death, the most incredible hypergrowth over the last few years and the highest stress from internal and external elements. [00:43:46] So degree of difficulty again through the roof. Yeah. What would be your one piece of advice in terms of fostering a culture that gets the most out of people in high stress situations? [00:43:59]

Tracy Franklin:
My one piece of advice would be human beings are incredible people when you let them do their thing, and everybody wants to work to an audacious goal. [00:44:14] And so I think, I think creating an environment where you’ve got this audacious goal and you just let people who be who they wanna be is the best. Right. I would throw all the leadership books away. They need to be rewritten. I’ve seen something that was remarkable in people. , and if you can create that environment, I think you, you, it’s just a winning recipe. [00:44:36]

Simon Mainwaring:
I love that. I love that. And Tracy so much respect for your leadership internally through such a critical time and, you know, to Moderna as a company for what it took to market. And, um, you know, let’s hope the future is a little less threatening, shall we say, but just, it’s just nice to know that, you know, companies like Moderna are out there and thanks again for everything that’ve done. [00:44:55] Yeah. Thank you. [00:44:56] Thanks for joining us for another episode of lead with we, our show is produced by goal 17 media, and you can always find more information about our guests in the show notes of each episode. [00:45:08] Make sure you follow lead with we on apple podcasts, Spotify, or Google podcasts. If you really love the show, share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you’re looking to go even deeper into the world of purposeful business, check out my new book and wall street journal bestseller lead with we, which is available, Amazon barn and noble and Google books. [00:45:27] See you again soon, and until then, let’s all lead with we.