Deborah J. Muller brings more than 20 years of employee relations and workplace investigation experience and expertise to her role as Founder and President of HR Acuity, LLC.
Prior to founding the firm, Muller held HR leadership positions in numerous Fortune 500 companies, including Honeywell, Citibank and Marsh & McLennan, where she developed a seasoned approach to conducting workplace investigations into allegations of misconduct. She has been instrumental in leading fact-finding cases involving a wide range of complex investigations, including sexual harassment, discrimination and inappropriate use of company funds. In her senior HR roles, Muller was also responsible for strategic organization redesigns, extensive change management initiatives, coaching and development of senior executives, and performing due diligence and integration activities for company acquisitions.
Deborah Muller earned a BS degree from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and a MA from the University of Maryland.
Elizabeth A. Mannix is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Management and Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion at the Johnson School at Cornell University.
Professor Mannix's research and teaching interests include: Effective performance in managerial teams, diversity in organizations and teams, power and alliances, negotiation and conflict, and organizational change and renewal. Recently, she has been studying the effects of informal power in teams, and the multi-faceted effects of diversity on performance in organizational groups.
Elizabeth Mannix received her PhD from the University of Chicago.
Julie Eskay-Eagle is the Managing Director at September Ventures LLC.
Eskay-Eagle was a full time employee of The Wellcome Trust in London, UK from 2001-2004 where she established a formal Direct Investment Program. Prior to joining the Trust she was a Vice President with Lazard Freres in Health Care Investment Banking and a founding member of Lazard Technology Partners.
Before joining Lazard, Eskay-Eagle was a Health Care Specialist with McKinsey & Co. in New York.
Julie Eskay-Eagle has a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Ethics from Cornell University and an MBA from Columbia University.
Anne Loehr is a partner in Riverstone Endeavors. Loehr has owned and managed eco-friendly hotels and safari companies in Kenya for over 15 years. While managing 500 employees there, Loehr could not find seasoned trainers to teach leadership, coaching, and teambuilding skills. She began to study these skills herself, and after selling her properties she returned to the United States to specialize in executive coaching and leadership development.
Loehr has also co-founded Safaris for the Soul, leadership retreats that help senior managers find their organizational values and purpose. These trips take place around the world and have been featured in The Washingtonian, Business Traveler and Body+Soul. Loehr's award-winning book "A Manager's Guide to Coaching: Simple and Effective Ways to Get the Best Out of Your Employees," was published by the American Management Association in 2008. Her work has been covered in Newsweek International, National Geographic Traveler, CNN Money, Sunday Times (UK), Guardian (UK) and other international media.
Anne Loehr is a graduate of Cornell Universityâ€[TM]s School of Hotel Administration.
Rosalind Resnick, a former business and computer journalist who built her Internet marketing company, NetCreations, Inc., from a two-person home-based startup to a public company that generated $58 million in sales, is the Founder and CEO of Axxess Business Centers, Inc., which provides strategic consulting and assistance in business plan development for startups and emerging businesses. Resnick co-founded NetCreations in March 1995 and served as the company's CEO and President until December 2001, pioneering the concept of 100% Opt-In email marketing in 1996 and spearheading the company's successful IPO in 1999. In 1994, Resnick co-authored The Internet Business Guide and, from 1994 to 1997, served as the editor and publisher of Interactive Publishing Alert, a semi-monthly newsletter tracking trends and developments in online publishing and advertising. Resnick began her career in the newspaper industry in 1980 at The Baltimore Sun and worked as a business writer at The Miami Herald from 1984 to 1989. Her articles about entrepreneurship and small business regularly appear in Entrepreneur.com. Rosalind Resnick received B.A. and M.A. degrees in History from The Johns Hopkins University.
Luciana Aguiar is a former partner with Data Popular, a market research firm established in 2000 in Sao Paulo, Brazil with the mission to build unparalleled knowledge on low-and medium-income consumers. Currently, Aguiar is a senior partner of Plano CDE a new consulting and research company aiming at understanding business models focused on BOP markets (www.planocde.com.br) and has been in charge of introducing cutting edge ethnography methodology into market research in Brazil.
Aguiar worked as a Program Officer for UNESCO sponsored programs for low-income population in Brazil coordinated by The Comunidade Solidaria Initiative and Sebrae (1998-2003), as a Curator for art exhibits and educational programs at museums including Museu Virtual A Casa, Museu da Casa Brasileira, and Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo (1998-2003), and as a Postdoctoral Associate at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) (1993-97).
Luciana Aguiar holds a BA in Social Sciences from UnB in Brazil a MA in Anthropology and a PhD in Social and Visual Anthropology , both from Cornell University. She is the author of Spinning Lives (1996, University Press of America), a book based on her doctoral research.
Luciana Aguiar holds a BA in Social Sciences from UnB in Brazil a MA in Anthropology and a PhD in Social and Visual Anthropology , both from Cornell University. She is the author of Spinning Lives (1996, University Press of America), a book based on her doctoral research.
Lynn Book is an innovative educator, internationally recognized performance artist, entrepreneur and creativity specialist who relocated from New York City to Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the fall of 2005 to accept a unique position as Faculty Fellow in Creativity at Wake Forest University.
For over twenty years Book has inspired students, professionals, businesses and institutions in a broad range of settings to create new models of innovation for individuals, workplaces and cultural domains. She has contributed to the development of groundbreaking programs that foster innovations in performance and new media in Chicago: The School of the Art Institute (1985-95), in New York City: The Sidney Kahn Kitchen Summer Institute (2000-05) and in Austria at the Transart Institute, Europe's first low-residency MFA program for new media, where she continues as an associate since it's inception in 2005.
Her 20 year teaching career in higher education has included institutions such as Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, Barnard College and Columbia College in Chicago, among others.
Her performance career has included citations, fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, the New York Foundation for the Arts and MacArthur Foundation funding for the production of a radio drama based upon her original one-woman theater show, Gorgeous Fever.
Lynn Book holds a BFA in sculpture from Memphis College of Art and an MFA in performance art and media studies from School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Amy Smith is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, she is the founder of the International Development Initiative at MIT and has taught courses related to the subject for 10 years.
She served in the US Peace Corps in Botswana for four years before working in Senegal, South Africa, Nepal, Haiti, Ghana and Hondouras.
In 2004, she was selected as a MacArthur Fellow, recognizing her efforts in creating technologies to improve lives in the developing world and for her finding opportunities for students to do the same.
Amy Smith received her B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT and is currently working toward an M.S. in technology and policy.
Alisa Cohn is founder of Alisa Cohn Coaching and is a Business Coach with more than ten years of professional experience in large and small corporate environments. Prior to starting her own company, her professional experience included working in the Middle Market Advisory Services Practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Alisa Cohn earned her MBA from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Fried Fellowship for Leadership and Academic Excellence. Alisa is also a Certified Public Accountant.