Discover: Redesigning HR at Scale Under Financial Constraint: How Cornell Is Centralizing HR to Drive Efficiency, Governance, and Long Term Sustainability
- Leading a university wide HR operating model redesign as part of Cornell’s Resilient Cornell initiative, responding to financial austerity by shifting from a highly decentralized structure to a centralized, portfolio based model that improves consistency, governance, and service delivery across colleges and units.
- Rebuilding HR’s foundation by realigning reporting lines, reallocating budgets into a centralized cost model, and introducing strategic HR business partner ratios supported by pods of generalists and centers of excellence, enabling Cornell to reduce duplication while maintaining strong local support for academic units.
- Driving measurable financial and operational resilience through attrition, retirements, vacancy management, and functional streamlining, contributing to seven figure cost reduction targets across the institution while positioning HR to deliver faster, more scalable, and more strategic support during one of the largest transformation efforts in Cornell’s history.