The ground is shifting under every team, and the biggest winners are the ones treating learning not as a checkbox, but as a performance system that fuels growth, agility, and innovation.
In this episode of the HRchat Podcast, I sit down with Rob Rosenthal, President of Udemy Business, to explore how learning and development is being redefined in an era shaped by AI, hybrid work, and rapid skills transformation.
Rob brings more than 25 years of leadership experience from Bloomreach, Adobe, and SAP, where he helped global organizations scale and modernize their approach to learning, enablement, and revenue growth. Now at Udemy Business, he’s leading one of the world’s most influential learning platforms — used by millions of professionals and thousands of enterprises worldwide — into the next phase of data-driven learning.
Recorded shortly after FWD London, Rob unpacks how AI, executive sponsorship, and measurable enablement can dramatically shorten ramp times, sharpen skills, and deliver business outcomes that leaders can trust. Rob shares what he’s seeing across industries and regions: a growing expectation for L&D to partner directly with technical teams to lead AI readiness while also proving ROI to the C-suite.
Listeners will discover a practical framework for building what Rob calls a “skills operating system” — one that starts with clear assessments and gap discovery, moves through curated learning paths, and lands on deliberate practice powered by AI. Rob explains how AI-based role play and virtual coaching can help new skills take hold faster, and how Udemy implemented this internally to reduce new-hire ramp time by 30% for account executives through structured enablement, not just new tools.
Skills That Outlast Hype
Rob highlights the continued importance of communication, change management, resilience, and leadership, especially as automation accelerates and teams face constant reinvention. He explains why a human-in-the-loop approach is essential for AI safety and bias mitigation, and how cohort-based learning fosters accountability and trust.
Finally, we discuss learning in the flow of work — the next frontier of enterprise education. Rob describes how private LLM integrations can deliver targeted, role-specific content at the exact moment of need — whether an engineer is debugging code or a manager is preparing for a tough conversation — turning learning from an occasional event into an everyday habit.
If you’re an HR, L&D, or business leader looking for a blueprint to transform training into measurable performance, this conversation offers a detailed playbook:
• Executive sponsorship that lifts participation and engagement.
• Multi-threaded ROI measurement that resonates with senior leadership.
• AI-enabled learning ecosystems that scale globally and deliver proven results.
Tune in to hear how organizations around the world are redefining how people learn, grow, and perform and take away practical ideas to make your own learning strategy future-ready.