312 - How an Army General Mobilized a 30,000-Person Company to Build Talent from Within: Patricia Frost, Chief People & Places Officer, Seagate

Patricia Frost, Chief People and Places Officer at Seagate, joined us on The Modern People Leader. We talked about her military-to-CPO journey, how Seagate built Talent Link to unlock internal mobility, and what it looks like to democratize AI across a global workforce.----  Sponsor Links:🔗 Learn more about Cloverleaf at cloverleaf.me/mpl🔗 Learn more about Tilt at hellotilt.com/mpl🔗 Explore the 2026 ​Deloitte Human Capital Trends ReportMPL Links:🔗 Go sign up for MPL Build.----  (07:25) Patricia’s story: four generations of military service(10:39) Transitioning from the military to civilian leadership(19:45) Applying military team development principles to HR(23:19) The internal mobility gap Patricia discovered at Seagate(24:37) Building Career Discovery, now Talent Link, with Gloat(26:16) Using AI to make the most of internal talent(29:29) Shifting from “my team” to “Seagate’s talent”(32:08) Training managers not to hold back internal talent(34:28) Seagate’s company-wide AI implementation strategy(41:17) Seagate’s AI Council, AI Collective, and AI Champions(43:26) CEO-mandated transformational initiatives and BHAGs(47:05) Creating an agent management system(48:01) Redesigning jobs without replacing people(49:40) Why AI agents won’t sit on Seagate’s org chart(52:35) What it means to redesign job roles and workflows(53:14) Seagate’s full job architecture review with Cobrainer(55:08) Skills taxonomy and planning for future talent needs(56:16) Why engineers are embracing job architecture---- 📬 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get episode recaps💡 Follow The Modern People Leader on LinkedIn😊 Follow Daniel Huerta on LinkedIn😊 Follow Stephen Huerta on LinkedIn---- 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.