Sean Moeller
Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer Cornell University
Seminars
Thursday 25th June 2026
Discover: Redesigning HR at Scale Under Financial Constraint: How Cornell Is Centralizing HR to Drive Efficiency, Governance, and Long Term Sustainability
9:20 am
- 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.
Thursday 25th June 2026
Develop: How Can HR Reduce Complexity Without Creating New Risk?
10:00 am
- Where does decision overload show up most clearly in HR operating models today?
- How do unclear ownership, manual work, and fragmented processes increase risk even when costs are reduced?
- What decisions should be standardised, automated, or governed centrally versus deliberately left local?
- How do leaders know when simplification has gone too far?
