HR Credit

Lynn has been practicing employment law exclusively on the management side for over 20 years. She began her legal career in San Francisco at Littler, Mendelson, the renown leader in the field of employment law. She later moved to Fisher & Phillips LLP, where she became an equity partner in 1995.

 Lynn has conducted hundreds of face-to-face employment law training programs for both supervisors and employees, specializing in all forms of employee and managerial employment law-related training. Lynn has also represented many private and public entities in harassment and discrimination charges and litigation.  She has testified as an expert witness in unlawful harassment matters, and frequently conducts “remedial” training for supervisors or executives who have been accused of harassment or discrimination.

Tammy D. McCutchen is a senior affiliate with Resolution Economics, providing expert services in the Company’s Wage & Hour and Human Capital Strategy groups.

McCutchen became affiliated with Resolution Economics in 2021. She is a nationally recognized expert in all aspects of wage and hour law. Her experience includes regulation drafting and enforcement, conducting internal compliance audits, defending agency investigations, designing compliance applications using smart technology, and serving as a consulting and testifying expert in wage and hour class and collective actions.

Prior to joining the DOL, she served as Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division at the U.S. Department of Labor. Nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she was the country’s top enforcer of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and wage laws affecting government contractors (the Davis-Bacon Act and the Service Contract Act). She managed an annual budget of $160 million and 1,400 employees, represented by two unions, in more than 250 offices across the country. She was responsible for the issuance of opinion letters and set enforcement policy. She also was the principal architect of the 2004 revisions to the overtime exemption regulations, the most significant overhaul of the regulations in 50 years. Since leaving DOL, she has been the principal author of numerous comments on proposed changes by DOL to the FLSA regulations, including on overtime and independent contractors. She also has defended dozens of employers facing DOL investigations of FLSA, DBA, and SCA compliance.

After serving at the DOL, she practiced law with Littler Mendelson, PC and was a founding vice president and managing director of ComplianceHR. At CHR, she directed the development of the only on-demand suite of intelligent compliance applications focused on helping employers address the ever-changing federal and state employment law requirements on minimum wage, overtime, independent contracting and more. Her Navigator IC and Navigator OT apps assess the risks of classifying workers as independent contractors and employees as overtime exempt as quickly as it takes to fill out an on-line questionnaire. She remains a Strategic Advisor for the company.

Previously, she was in-house counsel for employment at the Hershey Company, practiced law at Skadden Arps, and clerked for Honorable Daniel A. Manion on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Ray Suarez joined the “PBS NewsHour” in October 1999 as a Washington-based senior correspondent. Suarez has more than 30 years of varied experience in the news business. He came to “The NewsHour” from National Public Radio, where he had been host of the nationwide call-in news program “Talk of the Nation” since 1993. Prior to that, he spent seven years covering local, national and international stories for the NBC-owned station WMAQ-TV in Chicago. He is the author most recently of a book examining the tightening relationship between religion and politics in America, The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America. A Life Member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Suarez was a founding member of the Chicago Association of Hispanic Journalists.

John Fay is an attorney and technologist with a deep applied knowledge of business immigration, I-9 compliance and E-Verify rules and procedures.  During his twenty-plus year career, John has advised corporations, educational institutions, and individuals on a variety of U.S. immigration and I-9 issues.  At the same time, he has also been uniquely involved in information technology, having designed several immigration and I-9 management software applications.

As Director of Product Strategy at Equifax, John provides strategic leadership and direction in the development and support of Form I-9, E-Verify, and immigration case management software solutions.

Barrie G. Christman is vice president of the Individual Investor Segment of Retirement and Investor Services for The Principal Financial Group® and is also chairman of Principal Bank and Principal Trust Company, affiliates of The Principal Financial Group®.

The Individual Investor Segment is charged with ensuring that the Principal Financial Group® becomes a leader in helping individual investors achieve financial security by creating a compelling, personalized individual investor experience that results in long-term relationships.

In 2001, Christman joined The Principal, a global investment management leader in retirement services, insurance solutions and asset management, following over 25 years in banking.  
She earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics/Mathematics from Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, and her masters in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh. She recently served as president of the Community Depository Institutions Advisory Council to Chairman Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Board, and currently serves as vice chairman of the Government Relations Council of the American Bankers Association.

 

Susan Kosman, RN, BSN, MS, is the Chief Nursing Officer for Aetna Inc.  In this role, she is responsible for Aetna’s nursing strategy, which includes establishing a formal nursing presence in national healthcare and nursing communities; stewardship and strategy development for internal nursing roles and the business roles that support them; and workforce planning and leadership development.

In addition, Mrs. Kosman has oversight for the following core functions for Aetna’s National Care Management: clinical training; compliance; quality review and auditing; systems and reporting; and innovation, program design and management.  National Care Management provides clinical policy and operations support to all of Aetna’s segments.

Previously, Mrs. Kosman was the head of NCM Medical Management Services.  In this role, she was the liaison between National Accounts and National Care Management, representing National Accounts needs on strategic and operational medical management to the shared services.  She also oversaw the successful expansion and operation of the Dedicated Patient Management Units.  These seven units, located in Albany, New York; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Blue Bell, Pennsylvania; Highpoint, North Carolina; New Albany, Ohio Richfield, Ohio; and San Antonio, Texas; provide coordination of care and case management services to some of the largest National Accounts Plan Sponsors.  During her tenure and because of the unique services this area provided, the demand for customized Care Management programs grew; and membership increased from 600,000 in 2002 to 3.1 million in 2012.

Mrs. Kosman began her career with Aetna in 1995 as manager of Government Programs for the Northeast Region. Later, she assumed responsibility for case and disease management. In 1998, Susan joined Core Health Delivery Operations as manager for Quality and Audit. She returned to the Northeast region from 1999 to 2002 as director of Patient Management.  Prior to joining Aetna, Susan spent 10 years in the home health industry in various roles.

Susan is a Board member of the Aetna Foundation; Qualidigm, a healthcare consulting and research firm; and the American Heart Association, Greater Hartford chapter.  She represents Aetna externally on the Champion Nursing Coalition, and the American Organization of Nurse Executives Committee on Health Care Reform.

She holds a BS in Nursing from SUNY Downstate and an MS in Organizational Leadership from Quinnipiac College.

Allison West is an employment attorney by background and for over 20 years has assisted employers in creating and maintaining safe and respectful work environments.

She focuses her practice on delivering customized workplace training, conducting workplace investigations, coaching executives/managers concerning performance or disciplinary issues as well as leadership topics, and serves as an expert witness. Allison also specializes in using her mediation skills to help individuals and groups to work through conflicts and create more collaborative work environments.

Allison is a top-rated speaker at the SHRM Annual Conference as well as other HR/diversity conferences, and is a national expert on harassment, discrimination and investigations. She has appeared on PBS, CBS This Morning and in O Magazine discussing workplace harassment issues.

She is a member of the State Bar of California and holds her SHRM-SCP certification and AWI-CH (investigation) certificate.

Toni Pilzner is an attorney with more than 15 years' experience in advising employers on creating and administering employee welfare and retirement benefit plans. Having worked as a certified public accountant and as an in-house corporate tax analyst dealing with employee benefit plan matters before becoming an attorney, she also understands the financial and practical aspects of employee benefit plan administration. Toni has shared her expertise with SHRM members by presenting concurrent sessions on employee benefits topics at a number of SHRM conferences in addition to writing SHRM Legal Alerts and contributing to SHRM Online articles on employee benefit matters. She also served on the SHRM Total Rewards Special Expertise Panel and its predecessor, the SHRM Compensation and Benefits Committee, as well as serving a three-year term on the U.S. Department of Labor's ERISA Advisory Council.