Mapping Ties: Stories of Togetherness at Work

Anamaria is talking to Alla Zhdan, a Community Consultant and Community Builder, as she is taking us behind the scenes of the Project Managers Community she led for four years at SoftServe. We went into details on how Alla found and engaged the 15 Community Leaders for the 15 locations where the company was present. Expect a step-by-step, detailed process in her work, and make sure you have a pen and paper. There were lots of wisdom nuggets shared!Enjoy!⁠Connect with Alla on Linkedin.If you are building an internal community and would like to share that story with our listeners, ⁠⁠⁠please fill out this form⁠⁠⁠, and we will reach out to you.

We're excited to bring you behind the scenes of a community of practice within academia. Our guest today is Danielle Taschereau Mamers, the Managing Director of the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative. We are exploring a community of humanities faculty members who are doing research around questions of social justice and they are doing that using digital tools.This is a story about a group of colleagues that started having lunch together turned into a grassroots campus network, turned into colorful community with a rich learning ecosystem. Danielle shares the initiatives that her and her small team have enabled for the community members, and the impact they saw as a result. Enjoy!Connect with Danielle on LinkedIn, and explore more of her work.If you are building an internal community and would like to share that story with our listeners, ⁠⁠please fill out this form⁠⁠, and we will reach out to you.

In this last episode of the second season, we are joined by Drew Pontikis—Head of Social Learning at PwC UK. Throughout our conversation, Drew emphasizes the pivotal role of community leaders in fostering inclusive cultures and enabling meaningful engagement. From unpacking the delicate balance between preserving existing community values while embracing new perspectives to exploring the transformative power of shared experiences and social learning, this episode offers a deep dive into the art and science of community leadership enablement. Here is a bit more about our guest, in his own words:  My name is Drew, and I help communities succeed. I work in Manchester UK for PwC, leading our Communities of Practice Enablement team. I've been working with communities and communities for the past eight years and have been lucky enough to work with community leaders from wide-ranging domains and spaces.  Drew is also the brain behind the “Let’s Talk Communities of Practice” Substack Newsletter, which you can subscribe to here: https://communitiesofpractice.substack.com/ If you are building internal communities as well, we'd love to hear from you! You can reach out ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

Join us in this conversation with Katie McCauley who is currently part of the internal communication and community team at Oyster. She's previously worked on supporting Google's internal community program and is generally an active advocate for internal communities. We talked about both the business impact and the social and emotional value of communities in the work place as well as the role of community leaders in balancing creating versus fostering content. If you are also building internal communities, we'd love to hear from you, reach out here.

Today I am talking to Luke Michalak, who during his time with SuperAwesome stepped into the Community Manager role for the entire company, as the world was forced into isolation during to the Covid19 pandemic.  Over night, his role became crucial for the company culture, and his work focused on understanding his colleagues needs, and advocating for the changes they need to stay connected with the culture, and with one another.  Luke talks about the challenges of creating the same experience for colleagues working from distributed offices, and shares practical tips that worked for him, from small and important tweaks to their onboarding process, to a full-fledged yearly calendar aiming to foster a sense of community across a distributed organization.  If you are building internal communities as well, we'd love to hear from you! You can reach out ⁠here⁠. Learn more about our guest:  At SuperAwesome, Luke played a pivotal role in office management, vendor relationships, and community engagement, managing facilities relationships across North America (NYC, CHI, LA) and organizing major company events.  This experience was crucial in honing his ability to create engaging and inclusive environments. The acquisition by Epic Games expanded Luke’s responsibilities, allowing him to spearhead global employee engagement and experience initiatives, streamline onsite operations, and launch the Epic Games NYC Office. Utilizing platforms like Slack, Luke is cultivating engaging workplace cultures, emphasizing cross-functional collaboration, strategic insight, digital proficiency, and compassionate guidance.

In this episode of Mapping we take a little bit of height and explore the building blocks of community building with Tanja Laub. We cover building psychological safety in internal communities, surfacing and evolving their purpose, defining the audience accordingly and of course engagement! Pick up a cup of your favorite beverage and let her insights sink in... A little more about Tanja, in her own words: I work in the Community Management industry since 2006. I've built communities for the media company RTL and worked as project lead community at the perfume chain Douglas. In 2010 I started my own consultancy business and now help other companies build better communities, my main focus is internal communities. I have also been chairwoman for the German community management association for 4 years. You can learn more about the circle framework we mention in the conversation here and if you speak German, check out Tanja's podcast about community building. If you are building internal communities as well, we'd love to hear from you! You can reach out here.

In this episode, Anamaria talks to Olha and Maksym from Luxoft about their internal tech communities, and how the strong collaboration between the Subject Matter Experts leading the community, and the Employer Branding team is helping them maintain 11 successful tech communities. They share what made the third attempt to launch internal communities successful compared to the previous ones, and give us details into their creative "Tech Influencer Bootcamp" and the effect it had on their colleagues. If you are building internal communities as well, we'd love to hear from you! You can reach out here. Learn more about our guests: Olha is an experienced employer branding professional and passionate community builder with a background in global tech companies. Currently, she serves on the Employer Branding team at Luxoft, a leading global technology company specializing in enterprise technology services. In her current role, Olha is involved in a project to build 11 global technology communities, where she applies marketing tools to foster growth and engagement. Proudly made in Ukraine :) Maksym has 20 years in the IT field from junior project manager up to department director and head of the project management office. He’s spent the last 10 years at Luxoft focusing on project management excellence and quality assurance processes. Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and accredited Kanban Trainer from Kanban University (AKT).

Susagna is a corporate rebel at heart and it's no surprise that she ended up creating and nurturing communities as a way to influence and transform her company. In this episode she takes us through her personal story with communities: from building the first one from scratch with little guidance to successfully exiting it several years later once it had grown to a movement with its own voice internally. A great listen, so sit back and enjoy! If you are building internal communities as well, we'd love to hear from you! You can reach out here. A little bit more about our guest, in their own words: Scientist turned project manager turned capability developer, I see communities and the spaces they create as essential for learning, creating belonging and psychological safety as well as motors for advancing knowledge. At the end of the day, we come together in organizations to do what we cannot do alone, so community is the basis for delivering big things.

For the last conversation of Mapping Ties Season 1, we sat with the inspiring Deborah Madelaine—who's the Global Senior Manager of Social Learning at Mars. We talked about pivotal moments in bringing communities to the forefront of social learning within Mars, how Deborah and her team enable volunteers within their internal communities, how to build community across multi-cultural companies, and timezones, and how to effectively onboard new members. Check out all our notes in the Padlet board, and join us for the free live workshop on January 18th to unpack the lessons we learned in season one, and continue the conversation!

In this episode, we chatted with: Mandy Ho, Program Manager EMEA University & Asian at Uber EMEA Co-Chair + Women at Uber EMEA Central Lead @ Uber Crystal Andrus Training Supervisor & Career Development Committee for Women of Westlake + Hispanic Organization for Leadership & Action Co-Chair @ Westlake about Employee Resources Groups. What are they? Why do they matter? How are they structured? How do we measure their impact? Explore our notes and takeaways here.

A decade's worth of lessons learned packed into a one-hour conversation with the one and only Jaime McGeathy, Communities Director at Microsoft. Jaime leads the "Connected Communities" program at Microsoft, bringing together 75 internal employee communities aligned around customer business priorities. She shared her team's strategy to reboot the community, all the ways communities and members can join the program, practical ways to recognise volunteers, as well as a run through the tools and platforms they are using internally. Find our detailed notes on the Padlet board.

We've had an insightful conversation with our next guest, Michelle Farrell, who's a Senior L&D Consultant at Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and has been building several communities for the past years. We touched on ways to launch a community, the tools Michelle uses, and the very creative simulation game she designed to get people accustomed to the tools, as well as practical examples to reward contributions and enable community growth. You can check all the insights and takeaways in our Padlet.

We brought together Justyna Baber, the former Innovation Community Leader @ IKEA and Nast Marrero , the Business Agility Coach & Community Catalyst @ The LEGO Group to chat about communities used to foster a culture of innovation across the organisation. We touched on the spark that led to their communities, the formats they use to bring people together, the tools and ways they measure impact. Check out our detailed notes in our project Padlet, and enjoy the conversation!

We sat down with Teemu Lilja, the Head of L&D @ Telia, to discuss the first steps you must take in your community-building journey. What started as a strategic conversation about learning culture, ended up in launching a community of practice aiming to align all the so-called "Learning Practitioners" at Telia. Coaches, Trainers, Process Managers, Knowledge Managers, Change and Project Managers, Experience Designers, and Learning Facilitators—all have a shared goal: to improve the performance of their employees and teams. Teemu talks about stakeholder engagement in the initial phases, the marketing around the launch, as well as the kick-off session. ⁠Check out more notes and key takeaways on the Padlet board.

We were joined by three amazing guests to explore the community of practice landscape. Emily Webber is an Agile Organisational Consultant, coach, trainer and speaker Phil Reid is the Social Learning Leader @ JPMorgan Chase & Co. Olga Vtorushina is a Management Consultant We covered the impact that communities have within organizations, how to approach growth and numbers, and what communities of practice are and what they aren't. Check out more notes and key takeaways on the Padlet board.

Welcome to Mapping Ties! 🥳 We're Anamaria Dorgo and Sophie August, and we're delighted to have you here! We started Mapping Ties because: / We don’t have enough stories of success from companies building internal communities / We don’t know enough about the challenges such projects are facing / We don’t know “what good looks like” and what’s holding us back / We don’t celebrate the organisations and people who pave the way often enough We’re changing that. Season one of the podcast has seven episodes which are recorded LinkedIn Audio events. Yup, you heard that right! Mapping Ties started as a series of seven LinkedIn Audio events, where our hosts shared best practices in building internal communities of practice, and our listeners were invited to join the conversation! We captured questions, notes, and resources in our Padlet board which you can access here. We hope you enjoy the journey, and please reach out if you ever want to bump heads and chat about community building! 🌱

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Preben Arentoft, Ben Dunn, and Michael Bang about what it really took to build a community of agile coaches within LEGO Group. I asked how the community first came together, what helped it grow, and what kept people coming back.They also shared why they chose to keep things simple at the outset rather than over-structure the community, and how that helped it stay relevant as it expanded across teams and locations. To keep it real, they also shared what worked, what didn’t, and what they learned along the way about helping people connect, learn from each other, and improve how they work.I hope you’ll love it as much as I did.

In this episode, I talked with Nathalie Pannequin , a consultant in ESG, corporate culture, and employer branding, and the former Global Head of ESG at Ogury, about her transition from marketing to ESG leadership. If ESG doesn’t sound familiar to you, that’s ok, I had to look it up too. It stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance, which is a framework companies and investors use to evaluate how responsibly a business operates—not just how profitable it is.In this conversation, we explore the transition from centrally organized campaigns to volunteer-led Employee Resource Groups, and how that can empower employees to take ownership and drive meaningful change within their organizations.We talked about:Why community matters even more in uncertain timesHow small actions can spark lasting changeThe power of employee-led initiativesCreating safe spaces for conversations that aren’t always easyEnjoy!

Lata Hamilton is a Change Leadership and Confidence mentor, author of the best-selling book “Pioneer Your Career Change”, and the creator of the “Leading Successful Change” program. Lata has worked with some of Australia’s biggest companies on changes that have impacted over 100,000 people, operating model changes impacting thousands, global cultural transformations, and digital transformation that is literally changing the way that we work. Lata also won Best Independent Consultant in the Change Awards in 2025, and speaks about the future of work and career in the age of AI.Lata highlights the need for early and strategic engagement with change champions, the value of two-way feedback, and the importance of maintaining these networks for continuous improvement and community building long after the formal change process has been rolled out and implemented. Read Lata’s “Pioneer Your Career Change” book: www.latahamilton.com/pioneer See Lata’s website and course: www.latahamilton.com

Welcome back, community builders! I’m your host, Anamaria Dorgo. Today, I’m joined by Cory Welsh to talk about the power of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) for women in the workplace.Cory is a Senior Enablement Lead at LinkedIn and the Global Co-Lead of the Member Engagement pillar for Women@LinkedIn.In this episode, you’ll hear how LinkedIn’s longest-running ERG is structured, what drives its purpose, and how a volunteer-led initiative can create real impact across a global company.Cory also introduces a powerful idea: the Vision to Values Strategy. It’s a simple way to keep a community focused by tying its work back to the company’s bigger vision. At LinkedIn, that means empowering and inspiring women to grow their careers while staying authentic.The strategy starts with a mission statement and breaks down into three clear pillars: building skills, strengthening the community, and amplifying impact. These guide the ERG’s work and ensure every effort connects to LinkedIn’s mission and values.Enjoy the conversation!