Mathias Herzog, CEO of Korn Ferry Digital Business on AI, Talent Transformation and Scaling SaaS

In this episode of Software Leaders Uncensored, host Steve Taplin talks with Mathias Herzog, CEO of Korn Ferry Digital Business and President of Global Technology Industries at Korn Ferry. Mathias shares his journey from consulting in San Francisco to executive roles at Salesforce, Automation Anywhere, and now leading a $400M SaaS division inside a $3B global firm. He breaks down the challenge of unifying IP, data, and tech stacks from 20 acquisitions, and explains how Korn Ferry is productizing decades of talent science into a unified platform. Mathias also discusses agentic AI, the future of talent development, the difficulty of vetting AI-assisted candidates, and why leaders must focus, listen first, and avoid shiny-object distractions.