Diane Burrus a Senior Consultant at WFD Consulting, leads WFD's Workplace Flexibility, Workload Solutions/Team Effectiveness and Women's Advancement practices. Diane has provided strategic consulting to leading companies for over 25 years to create flexible, supportive and innovative workplaces and develop management practices that enhance employee engagement, performance and retention. Diane has designed global flexibility policies and guidelines, as well as developed and delivered training to executives, HR leaders and line management on workplace flexibility, work-life integration, workload solutions, team effectiveness, resilience and women's leadership and advancement on five continents. She led the development and implementation of WFD's Team Effectiveness Process (TEP) and IBM's award winning People Oriented Work Redesign (POWR) process being utilized by IBM managers worldwide.

For the past five years, Diane has been Director of WFD's Leadership Forum for Women's Advancement, a group of corporate Diversity and Women's Initiative leaders who meet regularly to explore and develop strategies to support women's leadership and advancement. Diane's clients have included AstraZeneca, Dell, Deloitte & Touche, IBM, Merck, Marriott, Prudential, Shell and Xerox. Diane is a graduate of Arizona State University and currently serves on the Alliance for Work Life Progress (AWLP) Strategy Board.

Lisa Buxbaum a Consultant and Project Manager, has been with WFD Consulting for ten years, specializing in the development of guidelines and policies for flexible work schedules and delivery of flexibility training for managers and employees. In addition, she has contributed to numerous projects involving the collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data through surveys, focus groups and executive interviews. Lisa has worked closely with clients both domestically and internationally in the professional and financial services, legal, pharmaceutical, and technology industries. She has conducted on-site research on child care and elder care topics for IBM in Argentina, Chile, Spain and Venezuela and managed multiple global dependent care projects. Lisa co-authored “The New Career Paradigm: Attracting and Retaining Critical Talent,” a 2006 WFD report on employee career patterns and preferences.

Lisa worked in both corporate and educational settings prior to joining WFD, including several years as a Program Manager at the Institute for Research on Higher Education. Lisa received a bachelor's degree from Williams College, and a M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jan Civian, a Senior Consultant, has been with WFD Consulting for almost 20 years focusing on assessment and work-life strategy, including dependent care, child care center feasibility, flexible work schedules, retention, diversity, and employee engagement. A survey research specialist, Jan has expertise in study design, questionnaire construction, and data analysis and presentation. Jan has particular expertise in women's advancement measurement and strategy, and has developed a mentoring curriculum for early career women. She has been the primary researcher for numerous client projects including those for Aventis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DePaul University , Dow Corning, DuPont, IBM, MIT, University of Georgia , University of Kentucky , and the University of Virginia Health System.

Jan has conducted national research on business travel, and she co-authored “The New Career Paradigm: Attracting and Retaining Critical Talent,” a 2006 national study of employee career patterns and preferences. She is also the co-editor of the May 2008 special issue of Community, Work & Family, featuring papers that draw on WFD's database to examine workplace flexibility. Jan has conducted on-site research in the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, India, Italy, the Philippines, South Korea and the UK. She holds a bachelor's degree with honors from Wellesley College, a master's from Stanford University, and a doctorate from Harvard University.

Mary Lou Fishman, a Program Manager at WFD Consulting since 1992, has managed a variety of school-age programs which include before and after school, vacation/holiday, kindergarten wrap around, middle school youth programs, and summer camps. Marylou has been a presenter and trainer for the American Business Collaboration on topics including Homework Enrichment, Theme-Based Activities for School-age Programs, Hands-on-Science, Conflict Resolution, and Middle School Youth. She has also developed curricula related to school-age topics such as Vacation Holiday Themes, Global Games, Kids Create and Invent for the New Millennium, and Homework. Marylou has delivered training face-to-face as well as through teleconferences and on-line courses. Most recently, Marylou has developed school-age programs in Argentina, Brazil, China, Hungary, Mexico, Poland and South Africa.

Marylou created and was the Director of the After School Program at Beechwood Community Life Center for five years before joining WFD. Marylou has a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a master’s equivalent from Quincy (MA) Public Schools where she taught for ten years.

Arlene A. Johnson, Senior Advisor at WFD Consulting, has over 25 years of experience working with organizations to identify workplace issues and develop strategies for effective change. She has worked with numerous organizations—including Deloitte & Touche, Eli Lilly, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, Marriott International, Merck, Ohio State University, Texas Instruments, University of Pennsylvania, and White & Case—to conduct needs assessments, advance women in leadership positions, and establish flexible work schedules. Additionally, Arlene has consulted to governments and companies in Japan , New Zealand , Singapore and South Africa , and other countries around the world. She is the author of numerous publications and articles on women's leadership, the business case for flexibility, and innovative work-life programs.

Prior to her work at WFD, Arlene was Vice President of Families and Work Institute, Director of Workforce Research for the Conference Board, and Vice President of Catalyst. Because she has chronicled leading edge workplace issues over the past two decades, Arlene has appeared widely in print, on radio and on television as an expert commentator. Arlene has degrees, with high honors, from Mt. Holyoke College, Union Theological Seminary, and Rutgers Graduate School of Management.

Peter Linkow, President of WFD Consulting, has over thirty years of experience in research and consulting on achieving competitive advantage through talent strategy, diversity strategy, and work-life strategy. Among the companies to whom Peter has provided strategy consultation are Alcatel-Lucent, Cummins, Kodak, Texas Instruments and UBS. He also consults on the dispersed workforce and the challenges related to excessive workload. Among Peter's written works are: Meeting the Challenges of a Dispersed Workforce: Managing Across Language, Culture, Time, and Location for The Conference Board; Winning the Competition for Talent: The Role of the New Career Paradigm in Total Rewards for Workspan; and Is Your Culture Aligned with Diversity? for Profiles in Diversity Journal.

Prior to joining WFD, Peter consulted with numerous companies on formulating and implementing competitive business strategies and improving their strategic thinking. Earlier in his career, he was CEO of two organizations serving people with disabilities, and a professor of management at Boston University, where he conducted research on strategy and strategic thinking. Peter received his MBA from Harvard Business School as well as an Ed.M. in educational policy, and a M.S. in psychology from Harvard and Indiana Universities, respectively. He received his bachelor's degree from DePauw University.

Jan Pagliasotti, a Consultant and Program Manager at WFD Consulting, has been a member of the WFD Dependent Care practice area since its inception in 1990, focusing on the development of quality child care centers and family child care. Jan has worked extensively with clients such as Ford Motor Company, IBM and Xerox Corporation to help them identify and understand the needs of their business and their employees, and design and implement appropriate dependent care strategies to address those needs. Jan has conducted multiple daycare feasibility studies involving employee focus groups, executive and manager interviews, and community assessments in numerous locations throughout the U.S.; in Beijing and Shanghai, China; and in São Paulo, Brazil. Jan currently manages child care projects in Argentina, Canada, China, and the U.S.

Prior to joining WFD, Jan worked extensively in the early childhood field as a center teacher and a training director. A graduate of Colorado State University, Jan holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Human Development and Family Studies, with a Child Development emphasis.

Debbie Phillips, Vice President of Client Relations at WFD Consulting, is responsible for client strategy and global business development, as well as managing the strategic direction for the American Business Collaboration, a collaboration of companies dedicated to creating and implementing solutions to improve employees' ability to integrate work and personal responsibilities. She has over 30 years experience in work-life consulting and dependent care and has been with WFD Consulting since 1996.

Debbie works with clients globally in the areas of collaboration management, strategic thinking, strategic planning, work-life strategy, dependent care strategy, dependent care solutions, multigenerational workforce, new ways of working, women's advancement, mentoring and flexibility. Debbie has also strategically guided research and implemented solutions for the American Business Collaboration companies on key business issues such as child care and elder care, multigenerational workforce, business travel, the dispersed workforce and the current focus on new ways of working in a global economy. In addition, Debbie has guided the development of products and services that directly impact the recruitment, retention, engagement and productivity of critical and high potential talent. Debbie's clients include Abbott Laboratories, AT&T, CBIZ, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, Fidelity, GE, General Mills, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Lucent, Merck, MetLife, Pfizer, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Prudential Financial, Singapore Employer Alliance, Texas Instruments and Wyeth.

Prior to joining WFD, Debbie owned and operated a child care business for ten years and worked for the Massachusetts Office for Children licensing child care and writing regulation and policy for child care, adoption, residential care and foster care. She is past-President of the Boston Association for the Education of Young Children. Debbie received her undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Education from Wheelock College and a master's in Management from Cambridge College.

Judith Presser, is a Senior Consultant at WFD. She has extensive corporate consulting experience, mostly focused on community needs assessments, dependent care feasibility studies, development of new child care centers and dependent care strategy development. During her tenure at WFD, Judi has worked with numerous clients in the development and implementation of strategies to meet their employees' dependent care needs and has managed the activities of the American Business Collaboration in five U.S. cities. Judi has also coordinated the efforts of a number of collaborating companies and child care vendors in developing or expanding community child care centers located near the companies' work locations. In addition to center development, Judi has initiated many programs for clients in the field of backup care, including mildly ill care, temporary or emergency care, and elder care. More recently, Judi has been working extensively with clients to assist them in understanding and responding to the needs of the aging workforce. Judi has helped companies target their efforts at employees who are caregivers for older relatives by creating a supportive workplace for them.

Judi received a bachelor's degree with high honors from Vassar College where she was selected to be a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and a master's degree in Educational Psychology and Guidance from Yeshiva University.

Amy Richman, a Senior Consultant at WFD Consulting, has more than 20 years of consulting and research experience in business and academic settings. A principal contributor to WFD's groundbreaking investigation of the drivers of employee engagement, Amy develops new research instruments and evaluation systems for clients who want to link human resource and work-life initiatives to business objectives. Some of Amy's product innovations include the Team Effectiveness Process, a team-based solution to reduce unnecessary work and enhance team productivity, and FlexMetrix, a measurement system that helps companies quantify the need and impact of flexible work schedules. In addition to working with many leading organizations in North America on employee engagement, flexibility, workload, resilience, women's advancement and dependent care, Amy's global work includes projects in Asia , Europe and Latin America.

Amy is a main contributor to the 2008 special issue of Community, Work & Family on the impacts of workplace flexibility using WFD's extensive database. Amy is also a co-author of Business Impacts of Flexibility: An Imperative for Expansion, which assembles for the first time quantitative data from 28 large U.S. businesses to demonstrate the impact of flexibility on business outcomes; senior author of When the Workplace Is Many Places: The Extent and Nature of Off-Site Work Today , a national study of off-site workers in medium to large companies in the United States; and author of several scholarly publications. Prior to joining WFD, Amy was a research associate at Harvard University where she managed cross-cultural studies of women's education, parenting and child development in several countries. Amy received her bachelor's degree from Brandeis University , and her master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University, in the field of Measurement and Evaluation.

Jill Schneiderman a child care and school-age Consultant at WFD Consulting, has over 20 years of experience in the work-life, Resource & Referral, and child care fields. Jill has worked at WFD Consulting since 2003, where she manages a wide variety of programs with a focus on global dependent care. These include provider training programs, community needs assessments, backup care programs, child care center development, and summer and vacation camps. She has developed programs in a number of communities including Rochester (MN), San Jose and Tucson; and in Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, India, Ireland, Singapore, and Sweden.

Prior to WFD, Jill worked as a counselor and manager at LifeWorks, a corporate Resource & Referral program, managed by Work/Family Directions and later by Ceridian Corporation; taught in child care centers and school-age programs; and was a trainer, parent educator, and child protective services worker. Jill holds a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family Studies, with a concentration in Early Childhood Education, from Cornell University , and has done graduate work at the Boston College School of Social Work.

Laurie Shannon, a Consultant at WFD Consulting, has a strong background in conducting research in the corporate and academic sectors. She has worked on numerous research projects examining employee commitment & engagement; stress & burnout; resilience & excessive workload; flexible work schedules; and daycare feasibility. These projects have assisted clients with their work-life strategies, programs for women's advancement and critical talent, and their desire to remain competitive. Laurie has been the project lead for WFD's last two biennial assessments of IBM's dependent care issues in over 30 countries. She is also the manager and programmer for WFD's benchmark database that currently contains over 50 studies. Laurie was also a contributing author to the May 2008 special issue of Community, Work & Family that features workplace flexibility articles based on WFD's database.

Before joining WFD, Laurie was a senior research analyst at Market Street Research in the fields of employee and customer satisfaction and evaluation. Laurie is a Smith College graduate with a master's and doctorate in Social and Developmental Psychology from Brandeis University , and she has an advanced graduate degree from Springfield College in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Abby Shapiro, a Senior Consultant at WFD Consulting, has almost 20 years of corporate consulting experience, mostly focused on global work-life and dependent care strategy development, community needs assessments, child care center feasibility studies, and development of new child care centers. Abby leads WFD's dependent care practice area and, since 1998, has led the WFD team that manages the IBM Global Work/Life Fund in over 40 countries. She has overseen on-site comprehensive assessments of employee demand and community supply of care in 28 countries, and implementation of customized strategies for each community/country. Abby has also worked with both U.S. and non-U.S. clients in the area of women's advancement, interviewing key executives, identifying primary issues for women's retention and advancement, and targeting solutions for particular populations such as female senior executives and sales forces for assessment and support.

A recognized leader in the child care field, Abby has served in an advisory capacity to a number of national and local organizations, including the International Leadership Committee of Tufts University Institute of Applied Development Science, the U.S. Federal Division of Maternal and Child Health, Head Start, American Public Health Association, and the Child Welfare League of America. Abby holds a bachelor's degree in Child Study from Tufts University and a M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from the University of Massachusetts Graduate School of Education.

Youme Yai, an Associate Consultant at WFD Consulting, specializes in qualitative and quantitative research and analysis in the areas of work-life, women's advancement, and flexibility. Youme has contributed employee assessments with corporate and university clients, including analysis of metrics on employee engagement and resilience. She has collaborated on child care feasibility studies, diversity strategies, and women's advancement initiatives. Youme also helps coordinate WFD's Leadership Forum for Women's Advancement, a group of corporate Diversity and Women's Initiative leaders who meet regularly to explore and develop strategies to support women's leadership and advancement . Her client experience includes BP, Cummins, Dow Corning, Eli Lilly, MITRE Corporation, UBS and University of Georgia. In addition, she has contributed to the Corporate Voices Workplace Flexibility for Lower Wage Employees research project.

Youme holds a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College .