About Hannah Elise Jones

Okay. My name's Hannah Elise Jones, I was in the class of Upsilon Prime. I graduated in 2018. I'm currently on the strategy and planning team in our people department at Uber.

MSOD changed the trajectory of my life in a lot of ways. I think that it was a community that I didn't know that I was looking for, both professionally and personally. I felt really for the first time that I had found a home in terms of like-minded professionals. I never really felt fully satisfied in business experience I'd had. I always felt a little counter-cultural in the things that I really believed organizations could and should do. And I didn't feel that way when I came to MSOD. So ... And a lot of people say that through this experience they find their tribe, and I would definitely say that's true of me as well. And that made me more confident professionally, so that had a big impact on my life.

And the community and the relationships that you built were really core to some significant development that I did in the program. I think that that's helped me be a better practitioner and a better professional, but also a better person. A better partner, a better friend, a better daughter. It's just helped me be a better version of myself in a lot of ways.

I've never been asked anything about my legacy at this age and stage. So I kind of hesitate a little bit. I think a lot about what I want it to be, and I feel especially when I'm in this community that I have a unique role to play in moving us forward. I work in tech, I live in San Francisco, and I find that frequently a lot of the dialogues that are had around what's coming next feel very normal to me. And I feel very strongly that OD has a very unique role in where we're going, especially where tech organizations are going. I think that if OD can play a greater role internally in some of these high tech organizations, we can shape not only what the experience is inside that organization, but how those technologies ... how those products are used, which has an impact on the world.

That's one of the reasons I was passionate to join my current organization, to join Uber. I think that there's no better way to make change than to get really close to those things that are causing the most disruption, and I don't necessarily see our field doing that in a super-intentional way. So I hope that throughout my career, I can stay close to those organizations making the change and bring our voice into some of those really big, disruptive moments that organizations are creating right now.

I'll still be mid career, probably, in the next 10 years, so that's exciting. Currently, I really aspire to stay internal. I want to see more of the OD point of view at the top of organizations. I would love to be a CHRO in an organization and really be able to create this kind of thinking from the top down. I see a lot of ... in my consulting experience and my internal experience, there's massive dysfunction in HR organizations, and I don't think that that dysfunction helps our message thrive or grow in organizations.

And I would just love to see a leader of that function be someone with an OD background, with a really creative and open view on how organizations could become places for individuals to thrive, how we could be different. And I think that that will really happen if the leader at the top of that organization, in particular, thinks in that way. And can really model it and bring it to other leaders in the organization. I don't know very many large companies where that's happened in a super-intentional way, and I would love to be someone that helps contribute to that and helps do that.