HR Leadership

Adam Seth Litwin is an Associate Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell’s ILR School and an associate editor at its flagship journal, the ILR Review. Dr. Litwin’s research, anchored in industrial relations, examines the determinants and impact of labor relations structures and technological change. His essay “Hollywood’s Deal With Screenwriters Just Rewrote the Rules Around A.I.” was published Sept. 29 in the New York Times.

Dr. Litwin has published a mix of empirical and conceptual studies intersecting the areas of labor relations and technological change in both industrial relations and medical journals, including the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Human Resource Management, Applied Clinical Informatics, and the International Review of Psychiatry.

Dr. Litwin’s pedagogy has been recognized with an “Ideas Worth Teaching” Award from the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program and the ILR School’s Duncan M. MacIntyre Award for Exemplary Teaching. At Cornell, he teaches undergraduate and graduate core courses in labor relations and electives focused on the evolution and impact of technological change on workers, organizations, and society at large. During his 2022-2023 sabbatical, Dr. Litwin served as the J. William Fulbright Visiting Professor of Work and Organizational Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Dr. Litwin joined Cornell’s ILR faculty in the fall of 2014 after serving as a standing faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, where he held appointments in the Carey Business School and the School of Medicine. Before earning his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Litwin researched industrial relations institutions in Great Britain as a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellow at the London School of Economics. He also put in time “inside the beltway” as a research assistant at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington.

Professor Ben A. Rissing studies regulatory, mobility, and social processes that operate behind the scenes to shape important facets of modern careers. These topics include how government regulators affect immigrant hiring and compensation, the performance implications of worker mobility, and the functioning of new organizational recruitment systems reliant on social connections. For his research, he negotiates access to, and analyzes, unique personnel data within U.S. government agencies, for-profit businesses, and university admissions systems, which often encompass millions of observations. Using modern data analytics, he builds datasets by joining disparate administrative, application, and employee records. Rissing uses these data to test theories with key implications for governments, workers, and practitioners.

Dr. Rissing earned his doctorate in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management; master’s degrees in management science and engineering management from MIT and Duke University, respectively; and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia. Before joining Cornell University, Ben was the Hugh W. Pearson Visiting Professor of Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship at Brown University and a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Brown University Watson Institute for International Studies. He also previously conducted research as a Wertheim Fellow with the Harvard Law School.

Bradford S. Bell is the William J. Conaty Professor Strategic Human Resources and Director of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS) in the ILR School 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’s research interests include training and development, team development and effectiveness, and virtual work. His research has appeared in a number of journals, including Academy of Management Review, Human Resource Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Personnel Psychology. In addition, Dr. Bell has published numerous chapters that have appeared in edited research volumes.

Dr. Bell is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and he is a former editor of Personnel Psychology.

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.

John Hausknecht is a 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.

JR Keller is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies in the ILR School at Cornell University. Professor Keller’s research focuses on understanding how firms make hiring decisions and individuals make career choices, with a particular interest in the ways in which the dynamics shape how employees change jobs within firms.

Professor Keller’s work has appeared in several leading academic and practitioner outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Industrial & Labor Relations Review, People & Strategy, and Organization Science.

Prior to pursuing a Ph.D., Professor Keller had two careers: the first as a financial analyst and the second as a career consultant. He earned his Ph.D. in Management from The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania and holds a Master’s in Adult Education from Indiana University as well as undergraduate degrees in Finance and Computer Applications from the University of Notre Dame.

Rebecca Kehoe is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies in the ILR School at Cornell University. Her scholarship brings a strategic human resource management perspective to the interplay of human capital and the broader social and organizational contexts in which it is developed and employed. Professor Kehoe’s recent areas of focus have included star performers, alignment of HR systems and business strategy, and process-based perspectives of HR system design and implementation. Her research has appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Personnel Psychology, and ILR Review. Professor Kehoe has served as a representative-at-large and on the leadership track for the Strategic Human Capital Interest Group within the Strategic Management Society and on the executive committee for the HR Division of the Academy of Management. She is currently an Associate Editor at Personnel Psychology.

Tony Byers is a diversity and inclusion expert who focuses on “the right thing to do” to the business imperative of building a D&I organizational culture to the next level. Author of the book, The Multiplier Effect of Inclusion: How Diversity and Inclusion Advances Innovation and Drives Growth, Dr. Byers is best known for leading and revitalizing D&I efforts with some of the most respected and successful companies.

Christopher J. Collins is Professor of Human Resource Studies and Director of Graduate Studies 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 consults 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, Journal of Management, and Personnel Psychology.

Dr. Collins currently teaches courses in Human Resource Management, Organizational Consulting, and Business Strategy to Master’s and undergraduate students in Cornell’s ILR School. He has taught executive development programs at Cornell University and the Society of Human Resource Management. He has also worked as a private HR consultant and conducted executive development programs for multiple Fortune 500 organizations and several startup organizations. Dr. Collins’ 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.