Compensation
and BenefitsCornell

Certificate Program

Diane Burton is a professor in the ILR School at Cornell University. Her primary appointment is in human resource studies, with courtesy appointments in organizational behavior and sociology. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty in 2009, Professor Burton was a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She began her academic career at the Harvard Business School teaching leadership and organizational behavior. Professor Burton earned her Ph.D. in sociology at Stanford University and served as a lecturer and researcher in organizational behavior and human resources management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Linda Barrington is the Associate Dean for External Relations in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business as well as the executive director of Cornell’s Institute for Compensation Studies. Dr. Barrington’s published research addresses employee compensation, gender issues in the workplace, employees with disabilities, and workforce demographics.

Tae-Youn Park (Ph.D., University of Minnesota) is the Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies in the ILR School, Cornell University. Professor Park’s research examines how employment policies and practices, such as compensation, parental leave, and employee turnover and retention, affect both employers and employees. His work has been published in many influential journals across disciplines, including Academy of Management Journal, Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Applied Psychology, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. He currently serves on the editorial board of Academy of Management Journal, Personnel Psychology, and Compensation and Benefit Review.

Before joining the ILR School, Professor Park’s was a Brownlee O. Currey Jr. Dean’s Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Management in the Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University. He taught three MBA courses and won a dean’s research productivity award in 2015 at Vanderbilt.

Allen P. Jackson served as a compensation consultant with a predecessor of Willis Towers Watson for 24 years. He ran the firm’s Global Databases Group, which conducted hundreds of compensation surveys in over 75 countries, and he helped develop and refine the firm’s data collection, analysis and reporting methodologies. He also advised the boards of major private and public companies in the media, information and entertainment industries. Mr. Jackson has an AB from Princeton University and an MBA from Columbia University.

Michael L. Davis is a former human resources professional with experience working in consulting, business, academia, and industry associations. Prior to his retirement in 2014, Mr. Davis served as General Mills’ Executive Vice President of Global Human Resources and had been the company’s chief human resources officer since 2008. He joined General Mills in 1996 as VP, Compensation & Benefits, and later served as VP, HR, Corporate, and VP, HR, U.S. Retail. Mr. Davis was named Senior Vice President in 2008 and Executive Vice President in 2013.

Before he joined General Mills, Mr. Davis worked at Towers Perrin (formerly TPF&C) from 1981 to 1996 in various compensation consultant roles. He was named both a principal (partner) and a vice president (senior partner) while at the firm and consulted mainly with large corporations and boards. Upon leaving Towers Perrin, Mr. Davis was the firm’s worldwide consulting practice leader for executive compensation.

Mr. Davis has served on the boards (and in board leadership roles) for a number of human resources industry associations, including the National Business Group on Health (chair), the Human Resources Policy Association (vice chair), the Center on Executive Compensation (one of the founders), the American Health Policy Institute (founding chair), the Employee Benefits Research Institute (chair), WorldatWork (chair), the National Committee for Quality Assurance (executive committee), and the National Academy of Human Resources (executive committee). He also served as an ongoing advisor to World 50 and HR50x on education matters for senior HR executives.

In 2012, Mr. Davis was named a Fellow in the National Academy of Human Resources. In the following year, he was named the Distinguished Human Resources Executive by the National Academy of Management.

Throughout his professional career, Mr. Davis has guest-lectured at several leading universities and served as an adjunct professor at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, from 2006 to 2019, where he taught graduate courses in Compensation Benefits, Executive Compensation, and Teamwork and Leadership. He currently serves as Executive-in-Residence at Cornell University’s ILR School.