Biography

Rob James is a managing director with Pearl Meyer with almost 15 years of experience in executive compensation and finance. He serves as a trusted advisor to boards and senior management at public and private firms across North America. 

He works with companies in all industries, but he has in-depth knowledge and expertise in designing compensations strategies for organizations in life sciences and technology, particularly emerging and high growth companies that are pursuing or have recently completed a M&A transaction or public offering.  

Prior to joining Pearl Meyer, Rob was a co-founding partner at Echelon Compensation Partners, an independent consulting firm specializing in executive and broad-based compensation at privately held and publicly traded companies, and a director at Farient Advisors in Los Angeles. He is a Certified Executive Compensation Professional, a distinction awarded by WorldatWork for excellence in the field, and a Certified Equity Professional, which is the only internationally recognized equity compensation designation focusing on taxation, accounting, securities laws, and administration of equity-based incentive programs. 

Rob holds a BSc. with honors degree in international management with American business studies from the University of Manchester, UK.
 

Biography

Deborah Lifshey is a managing director at Pearl Meyer, where she specializes in advising clients on compensation matters from a legal perspective including securities disclosure, taxation and corporate governance issues, negotiation contracts, and reasonableness opinion letters. 

Prior to joining Pearl Meyer, Deborah practiced at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where she specialized in executive compensation, ERISA matters, and corporate transactions, and at Holland and Knight, where she specialized in employment litigation matters. She has authored and/or co-authored the following works: "The New Qualified Plan Minimum Distribution Rules," The New York Law Journal (Winter, 1996); "IRS Changes Rules Through Field Service Advice – This Time on FICA and ESPP," Journal of Taxation of Employee Benefits (January/February 2000); Perquisites, Executive Compensation and Benefits Handbook, BNA Publications (2002); Negotiating and Drafting Employment Agreements, Executive Compensation and Benefits Handbook (2004); and Executive Compensation: The Perspective of the Compensation Consultant, Chapter 15 of Corporate Governance: Law and Practice (2005). Deborah is a frequent speaker and panelist on disclosure and taxation issues, and is regularly quoted on executive compensation best practices.

She is a graduate of the Industrial and Labor Relations School at Cornell University and the University of Florida College of Law, and served as a federal clerk for the Honorable Judge Susan H. Black on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Deborah is a member of the New York and Florida Bars.