Jeffrey Balash

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While Others React, I Anticipate

I serve on the board of Employbridge, an Apollo Global Management portfolio company and the largest industrial staffing firm in the US — $3 billion in revenues, 225,000+ workers placed annually. Beyond the board role, I work with the Apollo team on new products and strategies, drawing on five decades across private capital, investment banking, operations, and family offices on six continents.

I see strategic shifts five to fifteen years before consensus and help businesses reposition ahead of them. My track record includes initiating the first joint venture between the People’s Republic of China and a Fortune 500 company (Campbell’s Soup) — at Lehman Brothers, alongside former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke — and introducing Avon to Africa, where I established two of its most profitable subsidiaries, in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. My current work includes the intersections of AI, private credit, and industrial transformation.

I founded the Transactions Development Group at Drexel Burnham Lambert under Michael Milken, identifying undervalued companies for corporate acquirers and financial sponsors and financing industry disruptors. I then co-founded the first private equity firm with a lead Asian institutional capital partner, Sanwa Bank, then the world’s largest bank. I later co-founded Telephony@Work, one of the first cloud/SaaS companies, subsequently acquired by Oracle. The founding team went on to build two additional companies acquired by Five9, which reached a $13.5 billion valuation, and Nextiva respectively. I raised the A round for the Nextiva predecessor, remain an investor, and have maintained a 25-year relationship with the same team.