From Broadway to Moody’s: How Paul Tiesler is redefining what L&D leadership looks like

Paul Tiesler is SVP of Talent Development at Moody’s, where he oversees Moody’s University and leads learning strategy for approximately 16,000 employees across 40+ countries. He came to the role through an unconventional path: a career in professional acting, including a Broadway run at the Belasco Theater, followed by nearly a decade in retail management at Starbucks’ flagship Times Square location.

He sees those experiences as directly relevant. “Acting at its core is really about listening,” Tiesler says. “You have to start by listening to the business and really intimately understanding what their strategy is.”

That orientation has shaped how he runs one of the most ambitious enterprise learning platforms in financial services: 50,000+ courses, multi-modal delivery across video, live events, and hands-on labs, serving a global workforce with widely different roles and skill needs.

Building culture at a 125-year-old company

Culture at Moody’s isn’t aspirational language on a wall. It’s articulated through values—invest in every relationship, lead with curiosity, champion diversity, turn inputs into actions, uphold trust through integrity—and then operationalized through what the company calls culture commitments: own it, 5X, no spectators, and let’s go.

“Our corporate values are our DN. That’s who we are,” Tiesler explains. “Our culture commitments are how we show up.”

In practice, that means every program and initiative connects back to those commitments. “We’re making it very clear through communications, even the content itself, that these things are positioned in alignment to what folks are hearing at town halls from our CEO,” he says.

For a company with over a century of history, that through-line matters. “We want to make sure it’s around for another 100 years.”

The GenAI program that hit 99% completion

When Moody’s CEO declared in 2023 that inaction on AI was the company’s single greatest risk, Tiesler’s team built the response. The company-wide GenAI training program achieved 99% completion against an 85% target and earned a Brandon Hall Award.

Two factors drove the results. First, the CEO was publicly vocal in his support. Second, financial compensation was tied to completion. “That’s not something we often have the benefit of in L&D,” Tiesler acknowledges.

Completion rates were a starting point. Following the training, Moody’s saw a 40% increase in AI tool adoption across the organization, which Tiesler points to as the more meaningful signal.

Moody’s has since moved its focus to agentic AI. Tiesler’s team is building capability across three employee personas:

• Innovators: every employee, expected to use agentic tools in daily work
• Makers: 10 to 25% of the org, building low-code/no-code agents to automate business processes
• Developers: technical staff gaining the skills to move from software engineer to AI engineer

The framing connects directly to Moody’s culture commitments. “5X your output” is a stated expectation across the organization, and agentic AI is one of the primary ways Tiesler’s team is helping employees get there.

Keeping the human element in learning design

AI has made L&D more efficient in a number of ways: faster content development, quicker access to program outlines, reduced reliance on subject matter experts for first drafts. Tiesler uses these tools and sees their value. He also has concerns about where the field is heading.

“In some cases, we’re over-indexing a little bit on the technology,” he says. “We’re losing sight of uniquely human capabilities, which are equally important to augment.”

His concern centers on stickiness. Asynchronous content delivered through an LMS can cover a lot of ground, but behavior change tends to require practice, feedback, and time with other people. Tiesler continues to build programs that include those elements.

Moving from Net Promoter Score to Net Impact Score

Tiesler is rethinking how Moody’s measures learning. The traditional Kirkpatrick L1 survey asks whether employees liked a program and found it relevant. He considers those inputs useful but limited. His team is developing what he calls a Net Impact Score: a weighted composite of manager-assessed behavior change 30 days post-program and employee self-reporting on how much of the learning they are applying.

“It’s still subjective, admittedly. It’s probably not a perfect metric,” he acknowledges. “But that’s the direction we need to head so that we can measure learning transfer, learning scrap, and then ultimately net impact.”

Moody’s is also building skill proficiency dashboards using pre- and post-training assessments across approximately 20 prioritized skills. The goal is to give leaders a clear view of capability gaps by team. “At a snap, you can see for AI, data storytelling, and data visualization, my team’s proficiency is 5% advanced, 30% proficient, 20% developing,” Tiesler explains. That data feeds both L&D planning and broader workforce planning conversations with the business.

Early career development in an agentic AI world

One topic Tiesler raises with increasing frequency in conversations with other L&D leaders: what happens to early career talent as agentic AI takes over more entry-level work.

“If you look at places that could be particularly vulnerable to AI and automation, early career springs to mind,” he says. Organizations that do not think carefully about this risk developing what he describes as a diamond shape: experienced senior leaders at the top, AI handling a growing share of the work, and a shrinking pipeline of people building the judgment and experience needed to move up.

He points to apprenticeships and rotational programs as approaches worth investing in. “I’m encouraged to see some really creative thoughts around that,” he says.

On hiring for skills over credentials

Tiesler’s own path into L&D shapes how he thinks about talent. He got his first role at Moody’s because a hiring manager looked past an unconventional background and focused on transferable skills.

“I would never have had the opportunity in my career if I didn’t encounter somebody who thought that way,” he says. “Being open to unconventional talent pools is a real unlock.”

He applies the same thinking to his own team, hiring for curiosity and transferable skills and investing in his people’s development with the same intention he describes in the programs he builds for the broader organization.

Resources

• Connect with Paul Tiesler on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Moody’s Corporation
• Explore Growthspace for precision skill development at scale

Check out the full episode of Skilled for more insights on AI transformation, learning measurement, and building a culture that scales. Listen here.

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