About Mandy

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Mandy O'Dell is the CEO and Founder of workHarmony, a human capital consulting and HR services firm whose goal is to help organizations thrive by harmonizing business, organization, and people systems to create work environments where everyone can win, and businesses can go further faster. 

As a career people strategist and former Fortune 100 executive, she is an expert on human capital with two decades of experience in HR. She helps C-suite leaders, executives, and business owners design and implement people, culture, and career strategies to accelerate their goals. She has reimagined the art of the possible as an HR leader, enabling significant growth, transformation, and integrations at multiple companies in the finance, technology, business services, and consumer products industries.

Mandy was previously Vice President of Human Resources and an Enterprise Leadership Group Officer at Northwestern Mutual, a Fortune 100 financial services company. As an enterprise executive officer, she partnered with the senior executive team and peer enterprise leaders to influence the company’s strategy and steer execution. She held multiple roles over her tenure, including chief HR leader for several vital organizations: Technology, Data, Operations, and Enterprise PMO. In these roles, she partnered with the CIO, COO, and CEO chief of staff and led the organizations’ people functions, including designing and implementing their talent and culture strategies. Mandy also led the Enterprise Workforce Planning function, overseeing strategic planning and workforce optimization to ensure the company had the labor and talent needed to fulfill its multiyear objectives. Over her tenure, she served on multiple enterprise committees, councils, and task forces, including the enterprise portfolio management committee, M&A and strategic pursuits council, enterprise change management council, sustained funding task force, and the diversity, equity, and inclusion task force. 

Before Northwestern Mutual, Mandy led HR for multiple organizations, partnering with several dozen executive and C-suite leaders, including Global Services and Technology at Unum Group, Global Sales, Marketing, Technology, and Digital Services at Sutherland Global, and Global Real Estate and Networking Sales at Hewlett-Packard. She was HR program lead in the M&A functions at Scotts Miracle-Gro and Hewlett-Packard, and she has held roles in HR data and technology, talent acquisition, and start-up HR.

Over the years Mandy has built and led countless HR capabilities across all HR disciplines in multiple companies and industries. This includes building an enterprise M&A program office, multiple HR M&A program offices, multiple total rewards strategies and programs, talent acquisition and outsourcing strategies and programs, two enterprise change management offices, an enterprise workforce planning capability, multiple talent and culture strategies for global matrixed organizations, multiple DEI program offices and councils, multiple job architecture, skills, and career pathing transformations, multiple HRIS and HR technology implementations, multiple talent and performance management program transformations, and she has served as the HR lead through multiple digital and business transformations.

Mandy is a Society for Human Resource Management-designated Senior Certified Professional. She graduated from The Wharton School’s Chief Human Resources Officer executive program and earned a BS in Human Resources with Business Management from Texas A&M University. 

Mandy is an advocate for the military community, co-founding and co-chairing a nonprofit organization dedicated to adjustment, prevention, and improving the lives of fellow veterans and their families through financial planning, career support and development, venture funding, and business advisory. She also volunteers as a fractional CHRO for several of their small business clients.