Bradford Bell
Associate Professor
Bradford S. Bell is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies and Director of Human Capital Development and Executive Education in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Maryland at College Park and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Michigan State University.
Dr. Bell teaches courses in Human Resource Management, Training and Development, and Work Groups and Teams to graduate and undergraduate students. Dr. Bell worked in the management and organization development department of First USA Bank/Banc One and has worked as an HR consultant for multiple private and public firms.
Dr. Bell is a member of the Academy of Management, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, American Society for Training and Development, and the Society for Human Resource Management.
Diane Burton
Associate Professor, Human Resource Studies, Cornell University
Burton is a faculty member 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, she was a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She started her academic career at the Harvard Business School teaching leadership and organizational behavior. 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.
She is an organizational sociologist interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. Burton studies how management systems affect firms and individuals. Her primary research is a major study of high-tech start-ups in Silicon Valley including the study of entrepreneurial teams and executive careers. More recently she has been studying R&D teams. Burton is also studying leadership in the non-profit sector and employment practices in law firms.
Christopher Collins
Associate Professor and Director, CAHRS, Cornell University
Christopher J. Collins is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Management and Director of CAHRS in the ILR School at Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Collins' teaches, conducts research, and does consulting in the areas of strategic human resource management, the role of HR practices and leadership in driving employee engagement, and the role of HR in driving firm innovation and knowledge creation. His research has been accepted for publication in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Human Resource Management Review, and Human Performance. In addition, Dr. Collins serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Management, and Personnel Psychology.
He currently teaches courses in Human Resource Management, Organizational Consulting, and Business Strategy to masters and undergraduate students in the ILR School at Cornell University. Dr. Collins has taught executive development programs at Cornell University and the Society of Human Resource Management. He has also worked as a private HR consultant or conducted executive development programs to multiple Fortune 500 organizations and several startup organizations. His consulting work has primarily focused on talent management, employee engagement, and strategic HR planning.
Dr. Collins is a member of the Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society, and Society for Human Resource Management.
Laura Georgianna
Executive Director, Leadership Programs and Director, Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
Laura Georgianna is executive director of Leadership Programs and the director of the Roy H. Park Leadership Fellows program. Through these roles, Laura oversees the articulation of Johnson’s perspective on leadership and our strategy for building the leadership capability of each student within our MBA community.
Laura has spent her career working with leaders and their organizations to empower them to deliver results, grow the business, and achieve long-term goals. Most recently, she worked for Cornell’s ILR school designing and teaching programs in intrapreneurial leadership for companies around the globe.
Before Cornell, Laura was senior director, organization capability and development at Welch Allyn, Inc., where she led talent management, leadership development, performance management, and organizational development for the firm. Prior to that, she held roles in executive education, transformational change, and organizational development at Merck & Co. Inc. She also spent a number of years with Thomson Financial (now Thomson Reuters) in Account Services leadership roles.
Laura received an MBA with distinction from Johnson, where she was a Roy H. Park Leadership Fellow, and an MILR from Cornell’s ILR School. She holds a BA from the University of Rochester, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude.
John Hausknecht
Associate Professor, Human Resource Studies, Cornell University
John Hausknecht is an associate professor of human resource studies at Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. in 2003 from Penn State University with a major in industrial/organizational psychology and minor in management. He received the 2004 S. Rains Wallace Award for the best dissertation in the field of industrial/organizational psychology. Professor Hausknecht's research primarily falls within the domain of staffing and has appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Psychology. Recent papers have examined applicant persistence in selection settings, reactions to company hiring practices, and predictors and consequences of collective-level absenteeism and turnover. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Psychology.
Professor Hausknecht teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses on human resource management, staffing organizations, and HR analytics. He received the ILR School's MacIntyre award for exemplary teaching in 2008. Prior to academia, he worked as a consultant to Fortune 500 firms in the areas of leadership assessment, talent management, and organizational change. Professor Hausknecht is a member of the Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and Society for Human Resource Management.
Lisa Nishii
Associate Professor and Chair of ILR International Programs
Lisa Nishii joined the facculty of the Human Resource Studies department at the ILR School, Cornell University after receiving her Ph.D. and M.A. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Maryland, and a B.A in economics from Wellesley College.
Nishii is an expert on inclusion in organizations. Her research focuses on the confluence of organizational practices, leadership behaviors, and climate for inclusion on individual- and group-level outcomes. Using multi-level and multi-method research designs across a number of large-scale federally funded projects, she has found that leaders play an important role in shaping inclusion. In particular, the extent to which leaders role model inclusive behaviors, clarify the learning and innovation benefits of diversity for the group’s work, and set strong norms related to interpersonal interactions, determines the inclusiveness of their workgroup climates. In turn, workgroup climate has important implications for the authenticity of the relationship that group members develop, the positive versus negative quality of relational ties, the information that is shared among group members, the extent of conflict that is experienced, and ultimately the creativity, financial performance, and turnover rates associated with these groups.
Nishii actively publishes in top-tier journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, and Science, and serves on the editorial boards for AMR, AMJ, and JAP. She is currently the Chair of the Academy of Management’s Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division, and the Chair of the ILR School’s International Programs. She serves on a variety of college and university-level councils for diversity, globalization, and engaged learning. Nishii also consults with multinational companies, primarily related to diversity and inclusion and organizational assessment.
Stephanie Thomas
Lecturer, Department of Economics, Cornell University
Stephanie R. Thomas is a Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Cornell University. She teaches courses in microeconomics, labor economics and personnel economics. From August 2013 through June 2016, Dr. Thomas also served as the Program Director of the ILR School’s Institute for Compensation Studies, an interdisciplinary initiative that analyzes, teaches and communicates about monetary and non-monetary rewards from work. Dr. Thomas earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research.
Dr. Thomas's current research interests focus on the relationship between performance pay, worker motivation and productivity. Throughout her career, Dr. Thomas has completed research on a variety of labor economics topics including wage determination, pay gaps and inequality, and the quantitative analysis of employment discrimination.
Dr. Thomas teaches courses in microeconomics, labor economics and personnel economics. She strives to present complex theoretical concepts in an intuitive manner, and to demonstrate the relevance of these concepts to real-world issues. In all of her classes, Dr. Thomas incorporates a variety of active learning techniques encompassing a variety of learning styles. In 1998, she was awarded the NYU College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award.
