Exploring Executive Compensation and Governance FrameworksCornell Course

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.

Brian Dunn has been a lecturer at Cornell University since 2015 where he teaches courses in Executive Compensation. Mr. Dunn has a number of ongoing consulting clients and frequently serves as an expert witness on executive compensation issues. He retired as the Chairman of McLagan and the CEO of Performance, Reward & Talent for Aon Hewitt Consulting Worldwide at the end of 2015. In 2016 he served as a special advisor to the Vatican where he developed plans for a new HR function and helped create an executive development program for Vatican leaders.

Mr. Dunn currently serves on the Board of Directors of Silvercrest Asset Management where he is Chairman of the Compensation Committee and a member of the Governance and Audit Committees. He continues to be a Board Member of Spire Technologies and of the Phi Delta Theta Educational Foundation where he is chair of the Audit Committee and a member of the Investment Committee. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for Sullivan & Cotter, a private health care consulting firm. Before his retirement, Mr. Dunn specialized in incentive and executive compensation where he helped companies and their boards design and implement short and long-term incentive plans for executives and advised Boards on levels and forms of Directors compensation. Mr. Dunn has worked with dozens of private firms, helping develop partnership and phantom equity plans as well as assisting in creating compensation packages for newly hired executives. Mr. Dunn received a B.S. degree summa cum laude from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in 1977 and an M.B.A. with highest honors from the Cornell University Graduate School of Management in 1981.

Mr. Lowman has more than 30 years of experience consulting with companies across a range of industries in the areas of executive compensation, total reward strategy, performance management and leadership.

He provided testimony to the House Committee for Government Oversight and Reform on the independence of executive compensation, provided counsel to the SEC and met with staff members of the Senate Banking Committee to advise on the rules governing the use and disclosure of board advisors on executive compensation matters.

Mr. Lowman co-authored Closing the Engagement Gap, a book focused on how companies can drive higher levels of employee engagement to improve business performance. He was named one of the World’s Top 25 consultants by Consulting Magazine.

Mr. Lowman received a B.A. in English from Randolph-Macon College, and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.