Apollo CEO Marc Rowan Traces $1 Trillion Asset Rise to Hourly Wage Beginnings

Apollo Global Management Chief Executive Marc Rowan, who has guided the alternative asset manager past $1 trillion in assets under management following an expansion in private credit and insurance, tied his leadership approach on Wall Street to his early days working minimum-wage service jobs.

Speaking with iCapital CEO Lawrence Calcano on a podcast, Rowan detailed an early career that included driving vehicles between New York and Florida for seasonal residents, managing a party supply store, and working for a kosher caterer in South Florida. “I’ve had a lot of different jobs,” Rowan said. “I was a valet parker at the Diplomat Hotel—now, the Shell Bay Golf Club. I would drive cars between New York and Florida for snowbirds, transporting their cars for the winter.”

Rowan grew up moving between Florida and New York, completing high school in Hollywood, Florida, in 1980, when the federal minimum wage stood at $3.10 per hour. He has built an estimated $11.1 billion fortune in the decades since, maintaining that those initial service roles established core principles for his executive career. “Every one of those jobs, you have to take something away from,” Rowan said.

Fortune reached out to Apollo for comment.

Although raised in a family of lawyers, Rowan pivoted away from pre-law coursework to enter the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. His early exposure to finance included a summer in financial consulting at Booz Allen and working as a floor runner in the Blue Room of the New York Stock Exchange. Upon completing his undergraduate degree and MBA, Rowan took his first full-time finance position at Drexel Burnham Lambert in late 1984, joining its mergers and acquisitions unit.

When Drexel Burnham Lambert collapsed in 1990 amid the junk bond market crash, Rowan partnered with former Drexel colleagues Leon Black and Josh Harris to found Apollo the same year. Rowan stepped into the chief executive role at Apollo in 2021, directing a strategic pivot toward private credit origination and insurance assets, notably through its integration with Athene Holding. Today, Rowan also serves as chairman of the board of advisors at the Wharton School of Business, where he backed the creation of the Penn Wharton Budget Model to evaluate public policy and fiscal legislation.

Rowan’s background mirrors the non-traditional entry points of several prominent leaders managing major publicly traded corporations. Marvin Ellison, president, chief executive, and chairman of $122 billion home-improvement retailer Lowe’s, began his career earning $4.35 per hour working part-time at Target while enrolled at the University of Memphis. Ellison, one of 11 Black Fortune 500 chief executives, attributed his rise to pursuing operational tasks that peers avoided.

“I didn’t have great pedigree, I didn’t have an Ivy League education. I didn’t have any stellar international opportunities or stints on my résumé,” Ellison said in a 2022 interview. “I’m competing against all of these exceptionally talented people on paper; I had to find a way to differentiate myself.”

Similarly, former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi worked night shifts as a dormitory receptionist from midnight until 5 a.m. while earning her graduate degree at Yale University. “When we got consulting jobs or investment banking jobs, people looked at us and said, ‘Hey, these are brainiacs,’” Nooyi said during an interview with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Respect just went up—purely because of the hard work and all the efforts we put in…People realized that this was a grueling experience for us, and they respected us for that.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook, who leads the $4.49 trillion technology firm and holds a net worth of $3 billion, worked as a newspaper delivery boy in Robertsdale, Alabama, before taking an hourly position at 14 earning $1.10 per hour flipping burgers and serving ice cream at Tastee Freeze. Cook later attended night classes to earn his MBA at Duke University while maintaining full-time daytime employment. “My upbringing was centered on work and the belief that hard work was essential for everybody, regardless of your age,” Cook said on the Table Manners podcast.