Groat and Alpern 2025 Recipients Announced
Scott Buchheit, M.S. ’77, will receive the ILR School’s 2025 Groat Award and Linda Gadsby ’88 will receive the 2025 Alpern Award on April 24 at The Pierre Hotel in New York City.
“Scott Buchheit and Linda Gadsby are both accomplished alumni and stalwart supporters of the ILR School,” said Alex Colvin, Ph.D. ‘99, ILR’s Kenneth F. Kahn ’69 Dean and Martin F. Scheinman ’75, M.S. ’76, Professor of Conflict Resolution.
“Scott has made important contributions to ILR’s Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution and been a leader in supporting increased diversity in the neutral profession. Linda has made major contributions to Cornell as one of our most active alumni, including her invaluable service on the Board of Trustees. They are most worthy recipients of this year’s Groat and Alpern Awards,” he said.
Buchheit has spent his entire professional career working as a neutral in dispute resolution. He began as a mediator in community disputes with the American Arbitration Association, focusing on a land dispute between the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy and New York state.
He then transitioned to being a mediator in public sector disputes with the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission, following which he worked as a field examiner/field attorney with the National Labor Relations Board in Philadelphia.
Buchheit also served as the first director of the American Arbitration Association’s Task Force on Law and Business Schools, which successfully promoted the then-novel concept of teaching alternative dispute resolution in those schools.
In 1983, he became a full-time labor arbitrator, serving in thousands of cases in the private and public sectors, and on numerous panels ranging from professional sports to the health industry to education.
A founding board member of the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution, Buchheit established the Scheinman Scholars Graduate Scholarship to support the development of an inclusive next generation of neutrals in conflict resolution. He has also been involved in establishing a new introductory conflict resolution course at ILR for undergraduate students.
Buccheit is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University. He earned his law degree at Temple University, having studied international dispute resolution at Hebrew University School of Law in Jerusalem.
In 2009, he received the Outstanding Alumni Award from Penn State's Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations.
Buchheit lives in Lumberton, New Jersey.
Gadsby is senior vice president, general counsel and chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at the National Board of Medical Examiners in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She is responsible for the organization’s legal affairs, advises senior management and the board of directors, is a member of the executive team and is general counsel of the United States Medical Licensing Examination. She leads the Office of the General Counsel and Organizational Affairs division, which includes Legal Services, Disability Services, Volunteer and Governance Services, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Community Collaborations and Contributions.
Previous roles include 22 years as vice president and deputy general counsel at Scholastic Inc., in New York City.
Gadsby serves on the executive committee of the Cornell Board of Trustees and chairs the Student Life Committee. She is a member of the ILR Dean’s Advisory Council and Cornell Mosaic (an umbrella diversity organization).
An emerita member of the President’s Council of Cornell Women, which she co-chaired, Gadsby is also a lifetime member of the Cornell Black Alumni Association, which she chaired.
A graduate of New York University School of Law and a resident of South Orange, New Jersey, she was honored as a Top 50 Corporate Counsel by Icon in 2024 and 2022 and a Top 100 Most Influential African American Leaders in Business by the National Diversity Council in 2020.