Biography

Sharon Podstupka is a managing director at Pearl Meyer. She is a trusted advisor to boards and executive management teams in the areas of executive and broad-based employee compensation communication and change management. With over 25 years of consulting experience, she is one of the original pioneers of executive compensation disclosure best practices and has proven success in creating effective strategies and delivering content in challenging business environments and under intense scrutiny from investors and proxy advisory firms. Sharon has extensive experience in a broad range of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, oil and energy, retail, biopharma/biotech, and healthcare.

Sharon joined Pearl Meyer in 2013 after 17 years at Towers (Perrin) Watson, where she served as a director in the talent and rewards segment and led the executive compensation communications services team for the Americas. Prior to that, she was a compensation and benefits administrator and communication specialist at EMI-Capitol Music Group.

Sharon is a popular conference panelist at major industry events, including those hosted by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), Women Corporate Directors (WCD), and WorldatWork. She frequently contributes to industry publications including Workspan, Corporate Board Member, and CompensationStandards.com, and has also been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business, and Agenda.

She holds a BA in communication from the New York Institute of Technology.

Biography

Aalap Shah is a managing director at Pearl Meyer. With more than 20 years of experience, Aalap advises public and privately held companies on executive compensation issues, with focus on pay governance, pay-for-performance alignment, and incentive plan design. Of particular interest is the intersection between business strategy, people strategy, and compensation strategy, believing alignment of all three is required to design effective programs.

Aalap advises clients in a variety of industries, including high-tech, healthcare, financial services, consumer products, retail, manufacturing, real estate, and media. He also consults on special compensation programs for IPO and merger and acquisition transactions.

Prior to joining Pearl Meyer in 2006, Aalap was with Mercer Human Resource Consulting, where he specialized in executive remuneration advisory services.

Aalap holds a BS degree in industrial and labor relations with a concentration in international human resource management from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.

Biography

Jan Koors is a senior managing director with Pearl Meyer and head of consulting services. In this role, Jan is focused on leveraging the firm’s consulting capabilities and enhancing relationships with our national marketing partners. She is a member of the leadership team which guides the firm’s strategy. 

Jan has more than 30 years’ experience in executive compensation and governance and has consulted to companies of all sizes and industries. She advises company boards and management teams on all aspects of strategic human capital decision-making. Jan helps companies deconstruct their long-term value creation objectives into tailored HR strategies that go beyond simple competitive parity—designing programs that consider a company’s specific business strategy, management talent, and corporate culture.

A noted expert in the field, Jan has been quoted in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Marketplace, and Financial Times. She has appeared on CNN’s MoneyLine and NBC Nightly News, and has spoken at numerous seminars on executive and director compensation issues.

In 2025, Jan was named for the eighteenth time to the NACD D100 list of the most influential people in corporate governance. She is an NACD Governance Fellow, and serves as faculty for the NACD’s Master Class programs. She also leads Pearl Meyer’s relationship with Women Corporate Directors.

Jan received her BA from Wellesley College and is a member of the Wellesley College Business Leadership Council. She is on the board of directors for The Big Shoulders Fund in Chicago.

Biography

Dr. Susan Sandlund is a managing director at Pearl Meyer and leads the firm's leadership consulting practice. For more than 30 years, Susan has worked with boards, CEOs, and multiple levels of management on planned organizational changes at public and private companies and not-for-profit entities across numerous industries. As an organization psychologist, her work includes initiating and leading large-scale change to drive new business strategies, culture change, clarifying governance and decision-making, board and executive team effectiveness and coaching, organization design, executive assessment and development, and CEO succession planning processes.

Prior to joining Pearl Meyer, Susan was co-founder and partner of Veritas Partners, a leadership development and organization change consulting firm. Prior to launching Veritas, Susan was a partner with Oliver Wyman, formerly known as Mercer Delta Consulting (MDC) Group, working with CEOs and c-suite leaders on business transformation. She also served on the MDC board of directors. Prior to Mercer-Delta, Susan was a senior consultant with the Hay Group where she led leadership development initiatives for a wide array of clients. She served five years as an adjunct full professor at Columbia University and served on the board of trustees of Bon Secours Health System, Inc. (BSHSI) for 10 years, chairing the compensation and human resources committees. She is currently a director and the compensation committee chair for Peckham Industries.

Susan is a frequent speaker at board and industry conferences on the topics of CEO succession, board development, and organization change.

Susan is a member of the American Psychological Association and is certified in Hogan Assessments. She received her BA from Marquette University and her PhD from George Washington University.