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Business is an unlikely hero: a force for good working to solve society's most pressing challenges, while boosting bottom line. This is social purpose at work. And it's a dynamic journey. Purpose 360 is a masterclass in unlocking the power of social purpose to ignite business and social impact. Host Carol Cone brings decades of social impact expertise and a 360-degree view of integrating social purpose into an organization into unfiltered conversations that illuminate today's big challenges and bigger ideas.
Carol Cone:
I'm Carol Cone, and welcome to Purpose 360, the podcast that unlocks the power of purpose to ignite business and social impact. I am so thrilled about the conversation I'm having today because it's related to employees. And for those of you who know me, I have been a proponent of employees as the number one stakeholder for company's growth and success for decades. Well, today you're going to hear about an exceptional model of purpose and action that shows employees at the center of an organization's culture and professional and personal development.
Joining me is Lauren Coape-Arnold, Executive Director of the Apollo Opportunity Foundation, and Global Head of Citizenship at Apollo Global Management. Apollo manages more than 840 billion in assets across 37 offices worldwide. In 2022, the company created the Apollo Opportunity Foundation. What makes the foundation exceptional is the depth of its employee-driven, skills-based design.
First, the foundation has a grant council. It's composed of employees across Apollo's geographies and business units, that ensures diverse perspectives to guide funding decisions and that focuses on building long-term relationships. The second unique element, once the not-for-profits are selected for grants, employees can join a cross-functional deal team that applies their financial, their analytical and strategic expertise to help those organizations grow stronger. What's also exceptional, it's not that they have two or three or four or five days of paid time off for the skills-based engagement. They have unlimited time, because when they use their skills for these grantees, it helps develop them further and creates an exceptional, a special culture within the organization. In fact, those deal teams are so sought after that the AOF has a 200-person waiting list.
We'll explore how this exceptional model strengthens both Apollo's culture and its community impact, and why Lauren believes that when people bring their full selves to work, purpose becomes exponential. So, let's get started.m Welcome to the show, Lauren.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Thank you so much, Carol. I'm thrilled to be here.
Carol Cone:
Thank you. So I always like to start with my guest, a little bit of your background because you started out in finance, you went to Amherst. By the way, she also got her MBA from Yale, but you've worked in a different sort of path to where you are today. So please, let's share a little bit about that, and then I'm going to ask you this very specific question, why do you love your job?
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Great, thank you. So, I loved my Amherst education because it allowed me to follow my academic interests, which to be honest, I never would've thought would've led to a career in finance. I was a psychology and French major, I actually with Amherst's open curriculum, I never even took a math class in college. So, imagine the shock I had when I got a job in investment banking coming out of undergrad, and it was an incredible boot camp for me. It really was challenging, but a wonderful first career step. And it was also very unsustainable, it was incredibly hard and draining and I kept thinking, what am I going to do next?
I had the opportunity to go work at a hedge fund, where I'd be moving from investment banking to investor relations. And while I was at this hedge fund, they launched a foundation, and they wanted all of their employees to get involved. And the more involved I got as this investor relations associate, the more I wanted to participate, the more I wanted to learn, how do these nonprofits operate, and where is my place in this world? So, I started tagging along to meetings with the executive director.
And then I had this aha-moment where I realized what the hedge fund analysts were doing every day with corporate stocks, the foundation was doing with nonprofit organizations. And it occurred to me, I could make this big career shift. And I decided to pursue my MBA as the right pivot, the right way to do it, to continue learning and educating myself. And Yale School of Management was wonderful because they're almost the Amherst of business schools.
Carol Cone:
That's right.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
And from there, I've just been dedicated to being in these impact corporate philanthropy roles, always in a financial institution. It's how I was raised, it's the office environment I really enjoy. And I've been so fortunate to have this role now at Apollo for six years.
Carol Cone:
Now let's get on to Apollo, little bit about Apollo, because they are the parent that allows you for this incredible Apollo Opportunity Foundation. But just a little bit of background on Apollo for our listeners who don't know them but they should.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Yes, of course. So, Apollo is a high growth global alternative asset manager. In our asset management business, we seek to provide clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum, from investment grade to private equity. We've been around for more than three decades. We currently are at 840 billion in assets under management, as of June 30th, with 37 worldwide offices and around 5,000 employees that I get to call teammates.
Carol Cone:
Fabulous. Okay, so very large organization. So, something happened, somebody or some team decided they wanted to create a significant opportunity foundation. So, it's got a bold mission, it is got a founding investment, I believe, of over $100 million over the next 10 years. So, what happened at Apollo where this light switch went on?
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Yes, and I will attribute it to an incredible leadership team who had historically always been very philanthropic, individually. They hadn't bridged the gap or the divide in having the company be philanthropic itself. And that helped lead to the creation of my role in 2019, thinking about, okay, we're now a real grown up company, why don't we have anything? Our firm became majority millennial around the same time, and so as our workforce demographics were changing, they were showing up and expecting more from Apollo. So, that provided this incredible opportunity to come here, be the first person to build out the programs, but to do so in deep partnership with the senior team here.
I think everyone at Apollo believes it's so important to give back, that it is part of our corporate culture, our firm values. And through our CEO, Marc Rowan, when he became the CEO in 2021, it was his idea to set aside $100 million to invest over the next decade to expand opportunity, which is another one of our corporate values. So, it was a way for us to really put our actions or our beliefs into action, and to not just do so with significant capital. That is obviously very important, but to be creative and thoughtful and do so in a way that felt very authentic to who we are as a company, and that would most importantly, engage our employees.
Carol Cone:
And I love that you said creative and thoughtful, and then you followed it with authentic, because authentic is one of the words of the day, if you're truly going to grow, if you're truly going to inspire and engage with your stakeholders. And when companies are starting their foundation, they fund it with 25 million, 50 million, but this was not only 100 million, but it also had a long-term stretch. It had a decade. So it meant, and you could not say this, I'm sure this is done very carefully, you couldn't say it and then renege.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Absolutely. When Marc had the idea, let's create a foundation, and I got the Apollo Global Management Board's approval, Marc's three guardrails, the three aspects he wanted to be sure the foundation were built on, the foundation for the foundation. One was, it has to be about expanding opportunity. Two was, it has to engage our people. And three was, and we're not just going to put this money there and let it sit, we're going to put it to work. We're going to invest it in 10 years. And I think those three elements of the AOF's founding story are so core to every action we take today, in terms of our mission alignment, engaging our people, and making meaningful investments in the organizations we fund.
Carol Cone:
So, can you talk a little bit about how you picked the focus?
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
So, the Apollo Opportunity Foundation seeks to expand opportunity in the communities where we live and work around the globe by deploying our capital and engaging our people to invest in three areas, career education, workforce development, and economic empowerment. So, expanding opportunity is critical to what we do.
Where are we doing it? We're doing it in communities around the globe where we live and work. We want to be representative of our headcount and our regional office locations. So, we are highly localized to where we have people and business activity. And then, what are we doing? We're deploying our capital and engaging our people. That pair is so important to us. It's not just about the check. That, many companies can do, many foundations can do. We believe that by pairing our capital with our talent, we will create so much more value, and that is deeply baked into every action and decision and grant that we make.
We figured the best way to engage our people, which again was a core principle of AOF's purpose, the best way to engage our people was to do so in a way that they could understand. That they would be able to step outside of their office and immediately know how they were going to make a difference in the social sector.
Carol Cone:
So, I want to just pause for a second. So, while breast cancer is incredibly important, or prostate cancer, or youth mental health, or early childhood, it wasn't proximate enough to your business and the capabilities of your employees to truly, oh yeah, I get it. And that's a huge shift today in terms of public-private partnerships for social impact and environmental impact, is being closer to the business to truly then see how you can amplify using your competencies, your brain, your tools, your methodologies, for the issue.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Yes. So, we think about career education, workforce development, and economic empowerment as a proxy for one's life stage as they are graduating high school and going to college and thinking about what coursework to undertake. And then going from college to the workforce, what role am I suited for? Where am I going to find financial stability? And then from the workforce to this idea of economic empowerment. How am I going to be stable and create mobility for my family and become an elevated leader in an industry? So, we think of it as a pretty linear progression.
But we felt like these three pillars would resonate the most with our people. We wanted to start with them understanding what we were trying to do and not going into, to your example, a research or science organization that would be farther from their day jobs.
Carol Cone:
I've heard you in other conversations talking about, you really want to inspire the employee. A lot of companies are going, oh, yeah, right, I'll just give them a bonus or whatever, they get two days of volunteerism. You are much more than that.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
I mean, how long do we have, Carol? I could go on and on. So one, employees are the engine of the Apollo Opportunity Foundation. They are critical to driving every step that we take, every action that we make. They are the only group that can nominate organizations for funding. We don't consider outside or unsolicited proposals. Our employees also are the ones who evaluate possible grants.
And then they also, at the end, once we make a decision on a grant, that's not the end of our process, that's actually the beginning of our process. Once we make a grant, we put a team of employees together, an AOF deal team, and they are the ones who decide how to accelerate the impact of the organization by driving the relationship. We do really believe that it is a talent value-add experience, that our employees can get leadership development, stretch opportunities, projects that allow them to exercise new strengths or skills, and that they're bringing that all back to Apollo.
So yes, there is a business case. We believe that having our people volunteer in this very skills-based way with the AOF grantees is tremendously valuable. But there's also the softer skills that they're developing. They are coming back to the office after joining a volunteer event or a meeting with a non-profit executive, with a greater, a heightened sense of awareness of the world outside of Apollo. They're going to be better listeners, more empathetic, more understanding of different perspectives. It is so incredible to see our people's eyes open when they get their own little spark of inspiration from an AOF involvement, whether it's one time or an ongoing experience. And for me, that is really where I get excited. The value that we're creating internally and adding to our culture in allowing every employee no matter where they're based, no matter their title, no matter their business, to find a way to create their own personal sense of purpose, to me is the best part of my job.
Carol Cone:
Oh, that's fantastic. So, let's drill down even further. How do you do it? Because I like to really take the brilliance of your how.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
So the AOF grants council is a group of 13 senior leaders. It's all managing directors or partners who are, it's a competitive application process to be selected for this group. It is an incredible honor to serve. The grants council members join us for a term of three years, and they represent all of our businesses and all of our global offices, so that we're getting lots of different perspectives in the grant making decision body.
They meet quarterly to review all of the new prospective grants that are in our pipeline and to review organizations that are up for renewal. So they have serious approval authority, they can approve grants up to $500,000. Anything higher than that goes to the AOF board for their approval. But the grants council are really representing this robust, multidimensional diligence process, and they're my favorite meetings on my calendar, ever. I leave every single grants council meeting having learned something new, because it is a remarkably brave and multi-perspective group that they're teaching me things every single meeting. We will discuss, "Well, this is how we invest in our credit business. This is what we think about, oh, in equity, we're doing it this way. Let's adapt that. How does that portfolio construction model apply to what we're doing with AOF?" It's amazing to leverage all of their unique strengths and perspectives to bring and apply to AOF.
So, as we go through the application process with a new organization, we share a grant memo with the grants council. They read it and they come back to my team with questions. "Oh, what happened to their funding here? Why are their revenues dropping? Where are they looking to grow? Why did their numbers dip? What's driving this success there?" You name it, they are going to dig into the data. And then my team goes and performs a diligence call with each of our perspective organizations, and once we get all of the answers, we then go back to the grants council and ask them to score all of the organizations. So, we try to adopt or co-opt as much of the Apollo investment approach as we can in what we're doing in AOF. One, because it's incredibly brilliant and rigorous approach.
Carol Cone:
And rigorous, I was going to say that, yes. Yeah.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
And two, because that's how all of these grants council members are doing their day jobs.
Carol Cone:
So, are all of your employee engagement hours skilled? Is there anything that's unskilled?
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Yes. So with the Apollo Opportunity Foundation volunteerism, it is all skills-based. We also have citizenship, which is our broader volunteer program. And in citizenship activities, we have folks who want to go paint a school classroom or who want to go to an animal shelter or do a clothing drive. So that we offer everything to try to capture the broadest range of interest across the firm. But with the Apollo Opportunity Foundation, we do keep the volunteer opportunities and the engagement very skills-based, and that is all driven by the deal team members. So, if you're ready, I'm happy to switch to-
Carol Cone:
Oh, please tell me about the deal teams. Wow, yeah.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
This concept of an AOF deal team, again, is modeled exactly on how Apollo manages its investments. We don't make an investment and then walk away and say, "Let's check in 12 months." We make an investment and we are active partners with the company, or in AOF's case, the nonprofit.
So, once we decide on a grant and communicate that to the organization, we say, "And congrats, you've also received an AOF deal team." And a deal team is five to 10 employees from again, different businesses and different titles, and they are providing talent and expertise to drive deeper impact.
And the AOF deal teams are so passionate about the organization that they are supporting and working with. And in true Apollo fashion, they're competitive with one another. They all want to know who's the best, who's got the most power.
Carol Cone:
Yeah, I'm sure.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Who's being featured in this month's newsletter. And they want to really do more for their grantees, so it's a very self-motivated group. But we have a wait list of over 200 people at Apollo to be on a deal team and we don't have space for right now. So, it's been a wonderful program and ultimately, incredible value and impact for our partners.
Carol Cone:
So, that is a wonderful segue because I want to talk about the impact of AOF on your culture. And just what has it done? How has it inspired? And maybe there's a little story you can tell, but I'd just love to hear, because I'm sure it impacts your culture a lot.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Thank you, I believe it does. Culture at Apollo is our North Star. So, the AOF deal team is the perfect embodiment of collaboration. It is first, collaboration within the walls of Apollo. We're putting them on a team and saying, "You are now representing Apollo, and don't let this partner down. Do everything you can for our nonprofit." So we're fostering this sense of collaboration among colleagues and importantly, with our AOF grantees. They are meeting monthly together between the grantee and our AOF deal team. They're driving projects forward, they're planning oftentimes a whole year of events.
A lot of them can't believe that they're given this opportunity to give back. I've had new joiners come to me and say, "At my old company, I had to ask permission to volunteer, or I had it run by my manager." And I say, "No. At Apollo, we want everyone to find something to do. It is your choice what you want to do when you want to do it." We believe everyone is mature adults and can get their work done, and this is going to be an added benefit of what it means to work here, and it's so additive to our culture.
Carol Cone:
So, it sounds like you don't have the traditional two days of paid time off or three. How do you work the time? You just say, "We trust you, work it into your day job, get your work done."
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Correct, it is unlimited. We do not have a PTO policy for volunteering. It's something we've discussed and we've looked at peer firms who do offer that, but we felt like, no, this is actually part of what it means to work at Apollo, is that you should go out as, for example, an entire human capital team and beautify Central Park, which is right outside our team's window here in New York. Or, you should be able to take 30 minutes of your day to meet with your deal team and the AOF grantee and talk about the new investment banking boot camp interview prep that you're drafting for this partner. So, it is very much, we believe that everyone can do both. You can work at Apollo and you can make a difference.
Carol Cone:
Great, great. I know I'm not supposed to say, do you have one or two favorite grantees? Because everyone loves their children equally, yet, I'd love to hear a story or two perhaps about any of your grantees.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Yes. So you are completely right, Carol. I love all 27 of AOF grantees. And maybe I'll put the shine instead on the deal teams and what some of my incredible Apollo colleagues have been able to do in partnership with our grantees.
So, one that comes to mind is GAIN UK, Girls Are Investors UK. And they're a very young organization, they just launched a few years ago in the UK trying to get more female college students prepared for careers in investing. And so, we've been helping them from the beginning to provide both the career experience. We hire interns from GAIN, we do pre-job placement training, soft skills. What does it mean to work in a corporate environment? Helping train their scholars to be better prepared for their summer internships. But we've also contributed to leadership. We've placed an employee on their advisory council. We helped them build the blueprint for launching a junior board, and this is all work that has come from the deal team.
And so, the real beauty of the deal team and how it is drawing on the entire Apollo platform. We had a young equity associate on the deal team who heard through conversation with GAIN, so many of their female scholars are coming to London for their summer internships and they don't have anywhere to live. And London real estate is really expensive to get an apartment or a flat to rent for the summer. So, does Apollo have any ideas? How can you help us with this problem? We want all these scholars to come and take advantage of these internships, but they have nowhere to live. And this colleague had said, "You know what? We actually, Apollo just bought a set of dormitories. Why don't we provide them free housing for the summer while they're here for their internship?" And of course, it was a beautiful spark of an idea that then had to go through the required approval channels inside of Apollo.
But that's just one good story to show how if the grantee had only been dealing with me in New York and my foundation team, and not the local London team who were on the investment professional side and understanding the whole suite of the Apollo ecosystem in the UK, we would've never been able to come up with this incredible solution to tap into all of Apollo for our grantees.
Carol Cone:
Excellent, just wonderful. What advice would you give to someone sitting in your seat trying to go up, not 1.0 but 2.0, 3.0, with their approach?
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Some advice is to empower your people. I think that's where we always start. We want employees to be trusted. They are the ones who know their communities best. And we with AOF are global, we have grantees in India, in Hong Kong, in Tokyo, in Sydney, in Des Moines, across the US, in the UK we talked about. And we want to really give true leadership opportunity to our people. It is not just what our senior most leaders care about or their pet charities. We want our people to feel that true sense of empowerment and to unleash their skills and their enthusiasm and their energy to drive social change. So, that's a big one.
How do you do it? We fostered this sense of ownership, where we give the real title, you are on an AOF deal team. We have a sponsor for each deal team, which is a partner. So there's a sense of seniority, there's an opportunity to build a relationship with a senior person. We have a captain who's the key point person for all communications with my team. And then that sense of engagement is driving their own purpose and ultimately, performance. We are measuring the deal team and their activities and how they are performing. We ask the deal team to submit a report when we ask the grantee to submit a report. So, we're holding them accountable to give them the sense of, you have real ownership here. This is important and it's incredible opportunity.
Carol Cone:
That's beautiful. You very much continue to define what authenticity looks like, which is great. I'm curious in regarding reviews, is the engagement with AOF part of your review process?
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
It is. So, we at the beginning of 2024, we introduced a new question to the annual goal setting process where we kept it open-ended. Again, in this choose your own venture approach at Apollo, we said to employees, "What is your goal to contribute to our culture this year?" And that could look like, I'm going to join one of our communities for networks, whether that's the women's network or the Veterans network or any of the other great opportunities we have on that side of the house. It could be, I'm going to lead a volunteer event for my team or my office, or I'm going to get engaged with AOF in any of these variety of opportunities we have. And my team, we're always trying to provide highlights and put a great shine on some of our colleagues who are going above and beyond for AOF.
Carol Cone:
Super. A quick question. How do you use AI in any of the foundation's work?
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Yes. So, AOF has embraced Apollo's broader AI strategy, where we're exploring how technology can enhance our impact measurement and operational efficiency. So our team is incredibly small and mighty, and AI is going to be a tremendous resource in helping us scale and leverage our work. So, we've been trying to identify places that AI can help us streamline processes, focusing on productivity, collaboration, and improved performance. Something like a diligence review that might've taken our team hours to do on our own, we can now get in seconds through AI. And we're establishing a really strong governance framework for how we ensure responsible and impactful deployment across the organization. So, we're trying to integrate it honestly in our day to day, and we're working on ways to up-skill our colleagues and work on doing so with our AOF grantees as well.
We hosted an AOF summit in the fall, so just about a year ago, where we brought together all of our grantees here in New York for two days of workshop and learning. And the number one ask or need or concern of our foundation grantees was, "I'm scared about AI. I don't know how to use it. I don't know what tools our organization can afford, can adopt. Can Apollo help us?" And so, my team has been working very closely with our engineering team to create a tech for good working group that is going to begin sharing all of the ways Apollo is integrating AI into our workplace and sharing it with our nonprofit partners as well. So, we are definitely thinking about it both for ourselves as a foundation and for our 27 grantees.
Carol Cone:
Super, thank you. We have to end this conversation and it's been wonderful and very insightful. It's extraordinary. So, anything else you'd just like to share with our listeners? I always like to give the last word to my guest.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
Yeah, I mean, we are still building. My job is so fun, I have this incredible privilege to get to work with all 5,000 Apollo employees around the globe every day. And seeing what we've been able to accomplish together through this early collaboration has been amazing. And it gives me the energy to keep building and keep growing and offering more opportunity to align our purpose, our people, and our capital, because we feel like that is where AOF is going to have the greatest impact, where we're going to create value for all of our grantees around the communities where we live and work. And even though we're a few years in, it feels like we are still just getting started in our journey, and there is a long, purposeful road ahead of us.
Carol Cone:
Very, oh, beautifully said, Lauren. So in the beginning I said, "Why do you love your job?" And I trust that the people who have listened to this entire podcast can get the energy and the excitement and the innovation and the true passion of your personal purpose in your job. I want to thank you for the conversation. I would just like to say, while you're early in the journey of AOF, I would just share, you are far beyond many, many, many, many organizations, in terms of the integration, in terms of the wisdom, the smarts, the just get it done mentality. Very, very different. So, thank you so much.
Laruen Coape-Arnold:
You're welcome. It was an honor. Thank you so much for having me.
Carol Cone:
This podcast was brought to you by some amazing people, and I'd love to thank them. Anne Hundertmark and Kristin Kenney and Carol Cone On Purpose, Pete Wright and Andy Nelson, our crack production team at TruStory FM. And you, our listener, please rate and rank us because we really want to be as high as possible as one of the top business podcasts available so that we can continue exploring together the importance in the activation of authentic purpose. Thanks so much for listening.
p360_211 RAW (Completed 10/09/25)
Transcript by Rev.com
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