Change and growth have been constants in Matthew Breitfelder’s HR career—particularly in his last six years at Apollo Global Management, where he serves as partner and global head of human capital for the 5,500-person alternative asset management firm.
A few years ago, Apollo merged with an insurance company, accelerating the firm’s growth and Breitfelder’s focus on talent innovation, which, he says, hinges on creating a modern, high-performance culture.
“We’re striving to ensure we’re as innovative about talent and culture as we are about investing,” says the newly named 2025 National Academy of Human Resources Fellow.
Breitfelder’s team is working to “build a new playbook” for talent and culture to enable Apollo to become a “talent magnet.” It’s a strategy that emphasizes continuous learning and agility, and is anchored around the idea that HR needs to lean into change management more than ever and to put talent at the heart of the need for ongoing transformation.
As Apollo strategizes for growth, Breitfelder is guiding his team to pursue balance, embrace what’s “timeless” about the organization and be willing to constantly reinvent and evolve. Key to that effort has been listening—and learning.
Breitfelder borrows a phrase made famous by Microsoft’s Satya Nadella: Leaders should be “learn-it-alls,” not “know-it-alls.”
For instance, the employee survey—which he says is often undervalued at many companies—is central to Apollo’s pursuit of talent innovation.
“When done well, it can absolutely be a cornerstone of innovation,” Breitfelder says. The incoming generation, in particular, has firm ideas on how they want to work, and leaders should not just be attuned to those but invite feedback and be willing to challenge their own perceptions, creating a “flywheel” that enables the organization to continuously learn.
The survey recently garnered a 96% response rate, which Breitfelder credits to leadership’s willingness to take feedback, act on it and be transparent with employees about how it’s evolving to meet their needs.
Talent before tech
As HR guides organizations toward responding to evolving people needs, it’s also front and center in today’s tech transformations.
HR’s ability to lead this work was driven, in part, by the strategic elevation of the function during the pandemic, Breitfelder says.
“COVID was a game-changer for our function,” he says. “It put us right in the center of the most important issues our companies were facing; with AI, we’re staying right in the center of it.”
Just like the pandemic, HR is having to navigate the influence of AI with no written rules—inventing in “real time” how to guide employees and organizations through new ways of working. And similar to the health crisis, the most successful efforts are human-centered, Breitfelder says.
At organizations where AI transformations are faltering—the majority, at 70%, according to McKinsey research—it’s largely because the focus is on the tech, not the talent.
“Successful change has the human factors up front and throughout,” Breitfelder says.
HR’s greatest opportunity yet
Thinking rigidly about change is also a risk, he adds. Many organizations today are approaching AI with a “deterministic” mindset, but it’s a “probabilistic problem.”
“No one knows how this is going to unfold,” Breitfelder says. “Even the folks at OpenAI who are building the tools are trying to figure it out.”
HR needs to sit alongside tech and other functions to “hardwire agility” into the company and envision innovation in an unclear landscape, becoming the voice at the table pressing for “giving our people agency” to rethink skills, potential and their ability to “disrupt themselves.”
Increasingly, these demands will drive a “huge spike” in the need for coaching and effective change management, delivering HR leaders a prime opportunity to continue to demonstrate the function’s potential for strategic leadership.
“This is what we pride ourselves on in the HR profession,” Breitfelder says. “I’m excited about that. I’m already feeling it, as many other CHROs are: This is going to be the golden age of HR.”
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