Abby Brennan joined us on The Modern People Leader.

We discussed the power of ONA as the “shadow org chart,” how it reveals hidden influencers, and why it may be key to building smarter, more connected teams in the age of AI.

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(06:30) Abby’s Career Path – From CPA to PwC's Chief Purpose Office to People Ops at Carta

(13:00) Sabbatical & Career Reset – Reflections on alignment, values, and inertia

(15:30) Her time at Carta – Leading 6 People Ops functions and managing hypergrowth

(19:00) Experiencing a RIF – Abby’s personal and professional learnings from layoff

(24:15) What is ONA? – Introducing Organizational Network Analysis as the “shadow org chart”

(28:30) ONA in Action – Discoveries from Carta’s network visualizations

(35:10) AI & The Future of HR – ONA as a strategic lens for effectiveness, not just efficiency

(43:00) ONA Output & Use Cases – How managers and orgs can act on the data

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Past guests on MPL include Brené Brown, Annie Dean (VP of Team Anywhere, Atlassian), Josh Bersin, Katie Burke (Chief People Officer, Harvey), Liz Fosslien, Helen Russell (Chief People Officer, HubSpot), Dave Scott (Chief People Officer, ADT), Melanie Rossenwasser (Chief People Officer, Dropbox), Crystal Boysen (Chief People Officer, Sprout Social), and many more.