Biography

Sharon Podstupka is a principal 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

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.