Women’s Leadership Summit Set for Oct. 16

The ILR Women’s Caucus will host its annual Female Leadership Summit at 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 16 in 105 Ives Hall. The panel event “Mind The Gap: Navigating Gendered Wage Inequities” will be moderated by Associate Professor M. Diane Burton, chair of the Department of Human Resource Studies at ILR, and will feature Christy Pambianchi ‘90 and Beth Florin M.S. '85. 

The ILR Women's Caucus is an undergraduate organization sponsored by ILR with a goal of spreading awareness about issues related to gender inequality through educational, professional and powerful discussions.  

“The Women's Caucus seeks to empower and educate people on gender inequality, and especially empower young women to meet their professional goals,” said Selin Edebali ’20, the organization’s co-president. “We meet twice a month and our meetings either incorporate professional guest speakers – whether it be a professor in ILR, an experienced leader in the workplace, or an ILR alumna – or deliver impactful conversations on topics, such as intersectionality, feminism, or the gender wage gap."

In contrast, the summit is an annual event open to the entire Cornell community that brings prominent alumni back to speak on a specific topic. This year’s speakers – Pambianchi and Florin – are suited to speak about the gender wage gap, thanks to their work experience. 

Pambianchi is Verizon’s lead HR officer, managing compensation, benefits, talent acquisition, diversity and inclusion, training and labor relations functions for the nation’s leading provider of fiber-optic and global Internet networks and services. Before joining Verizon, she was executive vice president of People & Digital at Corning. There, she served in roles of increasing responsibility including senior vice president of Human Resources, division vice president of Business Human Resources and vice president of Human Resources. Before working at Corning, Pambianchi worked at PepsiCo for 10 years.

Florin, managing director in Pearl Meyer’s Boston office, leads the Survey and Employee Compensation Practice. She has specialized experience in the design, development and implementation of broad-based compensation programs and total remuneration compensation surveys. Florin was a co-founder of Executive Alliance, a technology industry compensation consultancy that was acquired by Clark Consulting in 2001. Before that, she was a senior human resource consultant with Mercer’s high-tech compensation practice and held human resource positions at Data General Corporation. 

“I always look forward to going to this event,” Edebali said. ““These women share their personal and professional experiences in dealing with these issues. Having these women come back just shows that even though they’ve graduated from Cornell and even ILR, they want to talk to students about their experiences, and as a student that's really encouraging. It shows the topic is important and all the things we’re talking about in the school are very relevant to the real world. So, to hear that perspective is really eye opening and if anything, uplifting.” 

Register for the panel by emailing ilrwomenscaucus@gmail.com.